Keep an eye out for read.ai being automatically added to meetings

[pete]

Mods: It's in here because it causes data breaches.

 

One of our headteachers joined a council-hosted online meeting recently.

 

As soon as one of the meeting participants joined, a "read.ai meeting notes" "person" joined straight after.

 

The meeting organiser queried it with the participant who said "...they had no idea where it had come from, and it happened all the time".

 

The meeting (as you'll probably guess) was not the kind of meeting where it's OK for a random person to sign up for a trial, forget about it and send a recording of every meeting to a third-party service for transcription and intent analysis.

 

Policy now is to check chat and flag any sign of such tools to the meeting organiser.  If we are the meeting organiser, we kick the tool and the person from the meeting unless a) everyone is OK with it and b) the participant's employer is aware of their use of said tools.

 

More info:

 

https://support.read.ai/hc/en-us/articles/23222131547795-How-do-I-remove-or-stop-Read-from-joining-meetings

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/MicrosoftTeams/comments/18zdaxp/readai_bot_how_do_you_block_this_for_the_whole/

 

 

[andy_b]

We have had this with a number of different tools now, otter.ai was the last one that was reported to me.

 

Half the time the users had no idea what was happening.  Someone created an account to read some meeting notes from another meeting and without being clear of the consequences had signed themselves up for a free notes taker for every meeting they attended....

[Bromcom_John]

They are a great tool, when wanted.
I use one (Otter) but have seen other people get properly confused when they didn't realise and ended up sending out blanket invites and bam, you have 5 different versions trying to record the same notes.
Keep an eye out.

[PotNoodleTech]

Errrr   the meeting host must have actually clicked and let the  "read.ai meeting notes" "person" join the meeting in the first place?  If so, why?  Do they usually allow random people that they don't know to join important confidential meetings?

 

That needs looking at too, their end!

[GrumbleDook]

Otter have got a good DPA and are generally very good, but it all depends on the setup, and who is the organiser/admin. If an attendee adds in a virtual assistant, then I raise the issue, and leave if I have to.

[pete]

On 14/07/2025 at 14:10, PotNoodleTech said:

Errrr   the meeting host must have actually clicked and let the  "read.ai meeting notes" "person" join the meeting in the first place?  If so, why?  Do they usually allow random people that they don't know to join important confidential meetings?

 

That needs looking at too, their end!

 

My guess (if I'm being charitable) is that they've sent an email to [email protected] and had [email protected] or [email protected] (taken over the responsibility from Bob) join the meeting enough times that their process is:

1. Let everyone in
2. Verify identities
3. KIck anyone they can't verify
4. Actually begin meeting and discuss confidential matters

Since (IME) trying to get a third party to a) acknowledge a role change and b) stop emailing the previous person takes somewhere between 6 months and infinity.

 

 

[pete]

Otter's outsourcing of consent for recording to the Otter-using person (vs explicit consent from each person being recorded) has won them a lawsuit:

 

https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/18/otter_ml_privacy_lawsuit/