Starting Oct. 10, UC Riverside students, staff, and faculty members can no longer send artificial intelligence-powered meeting assistants to Zoom meetings.

The updated terms of use are intended to protect the security and privacy of information shared in those meetings as the use of third-party AI tools for recording, transcribing, and summarizing meetings has increased in recent years, said Alex Chrystal, manager for communication and training for Information Technology Solutions.

Meeting hosts can still share summaries, recordings, and transcripts through the Zoom AI Companion tool but invitees can no longer send bots to attend on their behalf.

As Zoom meetings have become a regular part of work life since the pandemic, some have sought new ways to manage their time. An increasing number of campus users have begun using AI meeting assistants that allow them to skip meetings and send a bot in their place.

“Sometimes that makes attendees really nervous because the person isn’t actually present,” Chrystal said. “Instead, they see an AI assistant that often disrupts the meeting chat and indiscriminately captures information regardless of host or attendee consent.”

Some bots are sophisticated enough to answer attendee questions, potentially providing incorrect or misleading data, she said. As those tools become more advanced, the UC system has sought to add AI-specific guidance to its policies to protect the personal and sensitive data of students, faculty, and staff, as well as the proprietary data of the university.

UC is regularly a target for cyber-attacks such as phishing, malware, or ransom ware that continue to grow each year, Chrystal said.

“We know that the bad actors are leveraging AI also and so if our data is out there it presents a risk,” she said.

Many of the new AI notetaking tools don’t meet UCR’s security standards, which means UCR has no control over the data once it is captured and stored by these tools. However, Zoom went through a security risk assessment when it became a common platform for campus use and continues to meet UCR’s security and data protection standards, Chrystal said.

With the updated terms of use, Zoom AI Companion is the only approved AI meeting assistant for UCR users. Zoom will block any other AI tools from joining meetings and webinars.

Zoom allows the host to create meeting summaries, recordings, audio transcript, and includes features such as the Smart Recording option, which organizes meeting notes.

Meeting invitees, especially those unable to attend the meeting, can also trust that the information they receive is accurate as the updated terms require the host to review meeting summaries for accuracy and remove any sensitive information before sharing it with others, Chrystal said.

Learn more here about new Zoom and webinar terms of use.