Zoom's meeting summary, the feature sold as AI Companion until Zoom retired that name in June 2026, works from a speech-to-text transcript of the meeting, plus chat and shared-screen text if enabled. The host decides who receives it, from only the host up to every invitee including outsiders, and only the host can edit or delete it.
The features haven't gone anywhere. Meeting summary, chat compose and call summary are still included on paid Zoom Workplace plans, from Pro upwards. ZoomMate, launched on 1 June 2026 at $20 a user a month, is a separate agentic add-on that acts on meeting context, not a new name for the old features, so a small team doesn't need it to get summaries. Most of what matters for privacy sits in two places: the admin settings and the host's choices in each meeting.
What a summary is built from, and where it goes
Zoom's help page on how its AI features handle data lists three inputs for a meeting summary: speech-to-text data, which is always used; text read from shared screens, which is optional; and in-meeting chat messages, also optional. There's no audio or video recording involved unless someone separately starts a recording, which has its own prompts.
Once the meeting ends, the summary goes out by email, is posted to the meeting's group chat in Zoom's Chat, and sits in the Zoom web portal under Summaries, where the host can view, edit and share it. Three details are easy to miss:
- Only people signed in to a Zoom account during the meeting receive the summary automatically, even if the host chose to share with everyone.
- The group chat is a second channel. Anyone in that meeting's chat can see what's posted there, so the email isn't the only place a summary lands.
- Only the host can edit or delete a summary, and deletion can't be undone.
On data use, Zoom's data-handling page says it doesn't use customers' audio, video, chat, screen sharing, attachments or similar communications content to train its own or third-party AI models. It names OpenAI and Anthropic among the model providers it uses and says zero data retention terms are in place with them, apart from limited trust and safety exceptions. The emails themselves go through a delivery provider that keeps them for 7 days for anti-fraud purposes. Zoom also offers a zero data retention option for meeting summaries on request through your account team or a support ticket, which is worth asking about if your meetings are sensitive.
Who sees a summary: the four sharing choices
The most important privacy setting is "Automatically share summary with". Zoom offers four options at account, group and user level:
| Option | Who gets it | Suits |
|---|---|---|
| Only meeting host (at user level, "Only me") | The host alone, who can share it on by hand | Client calls, sensitive meetings, anyone new to the feature |
| Only meeting host, co-hosts, and alternative hosts | The people running the meeting | Meetings with a chair and a note-checker |
| Only meeting host and meeting invitees in our organisation | Everyone invited from inside the business | Internal team meetings |
| All meeting invitees including those outside of our organisation | Every invitee, guests included | Rarely a good default; fine per meeting when agreed |
For a small team, the invitees-in-our-organisation option is a sensible default: internal meetings get shared notes, and outsiders only receive a summary when the host deliberately shares one. Hosts can always send a summary later from the web portal with the Share option, by email address or contact name, after reading it first.
Setting it up for a small team, level by level
Zoom's settings cascade: the account sets the rules, groups can differ, and each user can adjust whatever the admin hasn't locked. Zoom's enabling page gives the current paths, which I checked in September 2026:
- Account level (owner or admin): in the admin portal, Settings, then Zoom AI, then Meeting. Turn on "Meeting summary with AI", decide on "Auto-start when meetings start", and pick the sharing option. Click the lock icon beside a setting so users can't change it.
- Group level: under Users, then Groups, choose the group, Edit product settings, then Zoom AI and Meeting. Use this if, say, the owner's client meetings need stricter defaults than the rest of the team.
- User level: My account, Settings, Zoom AI, Meeting, for anything not locked above.
- Transcripts: a separate setting, "Allow users to retain transcripts generated with meeting summary", lets hosts decide per meeting whether a transcript is kept. Retained transcripts are visible to hosts and to participants from your organisation. Some of Zoom's older help pages still call the settings tab AI Companion rather than Zoom AI, so if a label doesn't match, look for the other.
Two choices matter most. Auto-start saves hosts a click but means every meeting gets summarised unless someone remembers to stop it, which is the wrong default for a business that has any sensitive meetings. And lock the sharing option at account level, because a user-level setting of "all invitees including outsiders" is the most common way internal discussion reaches a client.
A one-person account: the pet shop owner's setup
Sole traders have it simpler, because the account owner is also the only host. An illustrative pet shop owner on a single Zoom Workplace Pro licence uses Zoom for supplier calls and the odd call with a dog-grooming partner. Her whole setup took five minutes: My account, Settings, Zoom AI, Meeting; summary on; auto-start off; sharing set to "Only me (meeting host)". After each call she reads the summary, fixes anything wrong, and forwards it by hand when it's useful to the other side. One quirk caught her out once: a supplier who joined from a browser without signing in never received a summary she had shared automatically in a test, because only signed-in participants get automatic copies. Sharing by hand from the web portal, by email address, solved it.
An optician's practice, before and after changing the settings
Consider an illustrative optician's practice with five staff on Zoom Workplace Pro. It holds a weekly 40-minute team meeting and monthly calls with two frame suppliers. When summaries first appeared, the owner switched everything on at user level: auto-start on, shared with all invitees. It worked well for the team meeting, saving the practice manager about 30 minutes a week of typing notes, replaced by about 5 minutes checking the summary.
The problem arrived on a supplier call. The meeting began with ten minutes of internal discussion before the supplier's representative joined, including the owner's view that the supplier's prices were "about 15% above the other brand, and we'll drop them if they don't move". The summary, auto-started and shared with all invitees, went to the supplier's rep, who was signed in to Zoom. The negotiation position was gone before it began.
The new settings, set at account level and locked:
| Setting | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Meeting summary with AI | On | On |
| Auto-start when meetings start | On | Off; hosts start it deliberately |
| Automatically share summary with | All invitees including outsiders | Host and invitees in our organisation, locked |
| Retain transcripts | Allowed | Allowed; hosts decide per meeting |
| External calls | Summary shared automatically | Host reads, edits, then shares by hand if useful |
The sum still favours summaries: 25 minutes a week saved on the team meeting is roughly 20 hours a year, and the supplier calls now get a summary the owner checks before sending, which takes 5 minutes. The rule the practice adopted is short: internal meetings, summary on and shared inside; anything with an outsider, host-only until read.
What participants see, and what to tell guests
When AI features are running, Zoom shows participants an indicator: the Zoom AI diamond icon changes colour. Participants who aren't hosts can also ask for the feature, with an "Ask host to start Zoom AI" option, and only the host or a co-host can start or stop the summary. That's a visible signal, but a small icon isn't the same as telling people, especially guests who don't use Zoom daily.
A line for meeting invitations, adapted by an illustrative picture framer who holds video consultations with customers about framing commissions:
We use Zoom's meeting summary to take notes, so we can send you an
accurate record of what we agreed. It works from a transcript, not a
recording. If you'd rather we didn't use it, just say at the start of
the call and we'll switch it off.Guests often ask "are you recording this?" when they notice the indicator, and staff should have a straight answer ready: "No video or audio recording. Zoom is making a written summary from a transcript, which I'll check before anything is sent. I can switch it off now if you'd prefer." That answer is accurate for a summary-only meeting, and it's wrong the moment someone also presses Record, so teach the difference along with the wording.
What to fix before using the invitation line: make sure its last sentence is true in practice, meaning hosts know how to stop the summary from the Zoom AI icon mid-meeting. And if your settings keep transcripts, say so; "not a recording" shouldn't imply nothing is kept. Wider consent questions for AI note-takers are covered in whether AI meeting note-takers are safe for client calls.
Five questions for the host before pressing start
- Is anyone from outside the business here, or joining later? If so, check the sharing setting before starting, not after.
- Will anything be said about a named person's health, pay or conduct? If yes, leave the summary off.
- Should chat messages and shared screens feed the summary? A shared spreadsheet of prices will be read into it if screen text is on.
- Does this meeting need a transcript kept? Decide per meeting if your admin allows the choice.
- Who checks the summary, and by when? Name the person; "someone will" means nobody does.
Thirty seconds on these at the start of a meeting prevents nearly every problem in the examples on this page.
Reading a summary before anyone acts on it
Summaries are usually good on topics and weaker on who agreed to do what. An illustrative garden centre's buying meeting produced this action list:
Next steps: [First name] to confirm the Christmas tree order of 240 trees by Friday. [First name] to ask the compost supplier for a price match. Team agreed to extend Sunday opening through December.
Two problems. The tree order was 200, not 240; 240 had been the first figure mentioned before the team talked it down, and the transcript captured both. And nobody had agreed to extend Sunday opening; the manager had said she'd "think about it" pending staffing. Acting on that summary would have meant an over-order and a rota change nobody approved.
The host edited both lines in the web portal before sharing, which is what the host-only editing rule is for. The habit worth building: whoever hosts reads the next-steps section against their own memory within the hour, checking every number and every "agreed". For turning checked actions into tasks automatically afterwards, see turning meeting notes into tasks with AI.
Meetings where the summary should stay off
- Staff matters. An illustrative dry cleaner's disciplinary meeting with an employee should not produce an AI summary emailed to invitees and posted to a group chat. Take notes by hand under your usual HR process.
- Anything about health or children. A music teacher's call with a parent about a pupil's anxiety before exams holds exactly the kind of detail that shouldn't sit in a transcript and chat thread.
- Negotiations with outsiders present, unless sharing is host-only, as the optician learned.
- Breakout rooms. Zoom's help page says meeting summary isn't available in breakout rooms, so don't rely on it for workshop-style sessions.
How Zoom's approach compares with Microsoft Teams' recaps is set out in Copilot in Teams meetings: recaps, actions and privacy, and a side-by-side of dedicated note-taking tools is in AI meeting note-takers compared for small teams.
A monthly ten-minute housekeeping routine
The Zoom pages I checked don't set out a fixed period after which summaries disappear, so treat them as records you manage. Once a month, the account owner or practice manager can:
- Confirm the locks. Open the account-level Zoom AI settings and check the sharing option and auto-start are still as agreed, and still locked.
- Scan the Summaries list in the web portal for any meeting that shouldn't have been summarised, and have the host delete it; remember deletion is permanent.
- Check meeting group chats for summaries posted where a guest could see them.
- Review retained transcripts if your settings keep them, and delete those with no further use.
- Note changes in Zoom's labels. The move from AI Companion to Zoom AI showed that menu names shift; update your own written instructions when they do.
Does a small team need ZoomMate?
Usually not at first. Zoom's own announcement describes ZoomMate as a new add-on that works across the workday: searching across meetings, chat threads, documents and connected apps such as Salesforce and Google Drive, and carrying out multi-step work like drafting follow-up emails and updating CRM records, with its more advanced capabilities using AI credits. Zoom is explicit that the included AI features keep working without it.
At $20 a user a month, a five-person team would pay $100 a month, $1,200 a year, before any credit use. That can make sense for a sales-heavy team whose meetings feed a CRM every day. For the optician, the framer or the garden centre above, the included meeting summary with sensible settings covers the need. A fair test: run a month with the included features properly configured, count how many follow-up tasks you still do by hand after meetings, and only then price ZoomMate against that number. The wider cost picture is in what an AI note-taker costs per seat.
Zoom meeting summaries: follow-up questions
Does Zoom's meeting summary record the meeting?
Not in the sense of an audio or video recording. It works from a speech-to-text transcript, plus in-meeting chat and shared-screen text where those options are on. Cloud or local recording is a separate feature with its own consent prompts. Whether the transcript behind a summary is kept depends on the retain-transcripts setting your admin allows and the host's choice for that meeting.
Can a guest from outside my business get the summary?
Yes, if the host's sharing setting is 'all meeting invitees including those outside of our organisation', and the guest was signed in to a Zoom account during the meeting. The host can also share a summary manually by email address later. If external guests shouldn't receive internal discussion, choose a narrower setting and lock it at account level.
Is meeting summary available on Zoom's free plan?
Zoom's help page lists a licensed user on Zoom Workplace Pro or a higher plan as a prerequisite, so the free Basic plan doesn't qualify. Check your plan in the Zoom web portal under your account's plan details, and compare the current Workplace plans on Zoom's pricing page before upgrading a whole team.
Further reads
- Can Lawyers Use AI Note Takers in Client Meetings? — Stricter rules for confidential client meetings.
- How to Update Your CRM Automatically After Every Sales Call — Turn call summaries into CRM updates without retyping.
- How to Write an AI Usage Policy for Your Small Business — Put your meeting-summary rules into a short written policy.
- What to Check in an AI Tool's Privacy Policy and Terms — What to look for in any AI tool's privacy terms.
- AI Note Takers for Financial Advisers: Compliant Meeting Records — Record-keeping rules when meetings are regulated.
- AI Security Checklist Before Connecting Tools to Email and Files — Security checks before AI tools touch business data.
- How to Plan and Run a Webinar With AI: Script, Slides, Follow-Up — A three-week plan for a small-business webinar, with AI drafting the run-sheet, slides and follow-up emails, and a dog groomer's live demo worked through.
- How to Use Take Notes for Me in Google Meet for Client Calls — Settings, consent wording and a notes-to-quote routine for using Google Meet's Take notes for me on client calls, with the sharing option to pick first.
- Slack AI for Small Teams: Catch-Ups, Search and Costs — What Slack's AI does on Pro versus Business+, what the upgrade costs a nine-person team, and how to test whether catch-ups and search save real time.
- AI Features Already in Your Software: What to Switch On First — Thirteen built-in AI features in Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, Xero, QuickBooks, Canva, HubSpot and Shopify, ranked by when to switch each one on.
- AI Tools and AI Development: The Complete 2026 Guide — the AI hub, including every tutorial in the AI-for-business series.
Sources: Zoom support pages (Using Meeting Summary with AI; Enabling or disabling meeting summary with AI; Enable Allow users to retain transcripts generated with meeting summary; How Zoom AI features handle your data), Zoom's post introducing ZoomMate (June 2026), checked September 2026.