On October 23, the UW–Madison Zoom Team blocked several 3rd party AI bots from joining UW-hosted Zoom meetings. This change reduces security risks from sharing data with unapproved artificial intelligence tools.
More about Zoom and 3rd party AI tools
If you need an AI meeting assistant, please consider Zoom’s built-in AI Companion, which is approved for university use. The AI Assistant in Webex is also available for university use.
The university has blocked the following 3rd party Zoom AI services:
- otter.ai
- read.ai
- fireflies.ai
- meetrecord.com
- sembly.ai
- hal.ai
University IT professionals will periodically review and block additional platforms as needed.
What is an AI meeting assistant?
AI meeting assistants can join meetings, access the transcript/chat/files, and provide items such as meeting summaries, action items, Q&A documents, etc. While these tools can make meetings more efficient, they also pose security and privacy risks by accessing meeting data.
University-approved meeting assistants
The university has reviewed, tested and approved the use of AI meeting assistant tools in Zoom and Webex. These tools are free, secure and approved for use with public, internal and sensitive data, as well as restricted data, including FERPA- and HIPAA-protected information under certain circumstances. Always know your department’s policy on AI meeting assistants before using one.
Learn more about approved meeting assistants
We’ll continue to evaluate AI meeting tools to balance innovation with data security. For more information about approved AI services, using AI with institutional data and relevant policies, please review the Generative AI services webpage.