AI bots and meeting memory: two Teams changes worth reviewing now

You start a meeting with a client and the participant list shows "Juan's Notetaker". Nobody is quite sure who invited it, or where those notes will end up. By now, almost everyone has been there.

Microsoft is preparing two changes to Teams meetings that deal exactly with this: one decides who gets in and the other what is remembered afterwards. Both are on by default, so it's worth knowing about them before they arrive. Everything below comes from the Microsoft 365 message center (MC1251206 and MC1429018) and Microsoft Learn documentation, checked on 24 September 2026.

What changes for AI bots joining meetings?

Third-party AI assistants, the ones that join a meeting to record, transcribe or summarise it, are convenient, but they raise an awkward question: who decided they should be there, and where do they keep what they hear?

Teams will detect these bots when they try to join a meeting hosted by your organisation, combining technical and behavioural signals during the join. When it detects one:

• It always sends it to the lobby, even if the meeting is set up to let everyone in directly.
• It is labelled as a bot, so it stands out from human participants.
• The organiser decides whether it gets in (and presenters, depending on meeting options). When admitting it, Teams shows a warning so it isn't done by accident.
• If it's already inside, it can be removed at any time.

It is on by default for every organisation. According to Microsoft's latest update, general rollout completes at the end of October 2026.

How is it configured?

In the Teams admin center, under Meeting policies › Meeting join & lobby, with the setting to manage external bots and their access to meetings. In PowerShell it's the ExternalBotAccessMode parameter of Set-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy:

If you'd rather keep all of them out, this is the command:

Set-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy -Identity Global -ExternalBotAccessMode BlockDetectedBots

Since it isn't documented, the sensible thing is to try it first on a policy assigned to a few users rather than straight on Global.

The fine print

• It doesn't detect every bot. Microsoft acknowledges this and asks for missed ones to be reported from Teams.
• It will sometimes mistake a person for a bot. There's a "This is not a bot" option when admitting them.
• It only applies to meetings, not to events such as webinars or town halls.
• It protects meetings hosted by your organisation, not other organisations' meetings you attend.
• For now, Microsoft says the setting can't be controlled through Entra ID group membership. More granular controls have been announced for later.

What is the AI meeting archive?

The second change goes the other way: it isn't about who is listening, but about what is remembered.

For every meeting that meets the requirements, Teams will create a file with a .meeting extension containing the meeting metadata (title, date) and an AI-generated summary of the key points. It lets AI answer questions about that meeting later on, citing the recap or the invite. Facilitator, the agent that takes notes in meetings, will use it first, and Copilot later.

The interesting part is that the archive stays even after the transcript or recording has expired. In other words, AI can keep answering about a meeting whose transcript no longer exists.

When is it created?

Only when all three conditions are met:

1. The meeting was transcribed and the transcript was saved.
2. At least one invitee has a Microsoft 365 Copilot license.
3. The meeting option "Allow Copilot and Facilitator" is set to "During and after the meeting".

It isn't created for meetings with sensitivity labels that include encryption, end-to-end encrypted meetings, or meetings where copying or forwarding content is restricted.

Where is it stored and who can see it?

• It's stored in a SharePoint Embedded container owned by Teams, inside your tenant and not in anyone's OneDrive. In multi-geo organisations, in the organiser's preferred data location.
• Nobody can open the file directly. Only Copilot, Facilitator and other Microsoft AI tools read it.
• AI only uses the archive to answer people who had access to the meeting (invitees or people the recap was shared with), and within the organiser's tenant.
• If the organiser's account is deactivated, the archive remains until it expires.
• It can be searched, held and exported with Purview eDiscovery.

How is it controlled?

• Organisation-wide: in the Teams admin center, in the AI memory and archive section of meeting policies, with the setting to allow AI to archive meetings with .meeting file generation. It's on by default and applies to the whole organisation: it can't be turned on or off for some users only.
• Retention: 5 years (1,825 days) by default, configurable in the same place. If you have Purview retention policies that apply to these files, they take precedence.
• Per meeting: the organiser can prevent the archive by setting "Allow Copilot and Facilitator" to "Only during the meeting".
• Deletion: the organiser can delete it from the meeting recap ("…" menu › delete recap content). Admins can use Remove-AIGeneratedKnowledge in PowerShell.

One limitation to keep in mind: information barriers aren't supported yet with this feature.

As for dates, Microsoft has already pushed them back once. According to the 21 September update, the first organisations get it in early November and the rest between December and January. The setting appears in the admin center about two weeks before files start being generated, so there's time to decide.

What we would do

1. Leave bot detection as it comes (with approval) and let meeting organisers know they'll see labelled bots in the lobby.
2. Decide whether to block them outright. If your organisation has no approved external assistant, BlockDetectedBots is a reasonable choice. Try it on a test policy first.
3. Ask which AI assistants the team already uses. If any are needed, better to know before they start getting stuck in the lobby.
4. Review the 5-year period before November. For many companies it's too long. The logical thing is to align it with how long you already keep transcripts and recordings.
5. Explain the "Only during the meeting" option to organisers for sensitive meetings: leadership, HR, clients with confidentiality requirements.

Our take: having an AI take notes can be very useful. But as organisers, we've rarely known where someone else's bot stored those notes, or who could read them. With these two changes, Teams at least makes us decide.

If you'd like us to review how your Teams meetings are configured, tell us in three lines.