Who Is Really in Your Meeting? The New Power and Risk of AI Meeting Assistants

Written by Inbal Rodnay

I love my meeting assistant. I don’t go anywhere without it! Tons of magic is happening now that I have a written repository of (almost) all my conversations from the past months and years.

And now, there’s a step jump. For good, and for bad. The kind that takes some deep breathing to get used to.

The fun bit: from quiet scribe to active helper.

So far, AI meeting assistants were quiet scribes. They recorded, transcribed, and sent a neat summary.

That alone felt magical. But we got used to it, right?

Now they are starting to be more active participants.

I had a play with this with my friends at MVA Bennett, an accounting firm in Melbourne, who kindly agreed to share and I included bits in this video.

During the session, we used voice to chat with my meeting assistant.

We asked questions about our meeting, like:

• ‘What project is Michael working on?’

We asked questions about the world:

• ‘What is the GST registration threshold for small businesses in Australia?’

Allowing the AI meeting assistant to reply in voice is still a bit clunky, so I prefer to keep the responses in text. I talk to it in voice, it replies in text. For now.

The important shift is in how we think about it. You are no longer just recording the meeting. You have an AI helper you can talk to while the meeting is running.

It feels a bit weird, but I am sure we will get used to it very quickly.

What happens next?

Where does this go from here?

Next, AI meeting assistants will get tools. Like the ability to search the web during the meeting, create a task, or fetch information from other systems.

We are already seeing early attempts in these capabilities in all of the AI meeting assistants.

Picture this, during the meeting, you ask your AI meeting assistant to:

• log a specific task into your practice management
• add a note in your CRM or client file
• send a quick Teams message to someone who is not in the meeting.
• grab a budget document from your document system and bringing it into the call

Once that becomes normal, it will feel less like a scribe and more like a real assistant.

The uncomfortable bit: uninvited guests.

There is a flip side to all this.

We all got used to seeing meeting assistants join our meetings, and we all laugh when there are ‘three of us and four of them’.

The risk now, is that we are getting quite comfortable with having them in the room without being quite sure who is who.

So the risk is not that your trusted tools suddenly go rogue with your data.

The more worrying pattern is that we are not quite sure who is in the room with us, listening and recording.

CyberAlberta recently highlighted an example where a tool called WebinarTV was joining meetings, recording them without consent, and then selling the content online. You can read their write up here, which I first saw thanks to Jo Buchanan.

If your firm handles client confidential information, that is not a quirky edge case. It is exactly the kind of thing your partners and risk committee would rather prevent than explain afterwards.

How to Keep Safe

Don’t stop using AI meeting assistants.

Here are some measures we can all put in place…

For small meetings:

• Take a few seconds at the start of a meeting to identify who or what is in the room.
• Check which meeting assistants belong to which person.
• If there is a mystery bot that no one recognises (and there often is), remove it.

In larger private meetings:

• In a large meeting it can be impractical to identify all bots.
• Decide up front whether AI assistants are allowed.
• If you need a record, choose one trusted recorder, remove all others, and share the recording/transcript later. So you know exactly who you shared it with.

For public events and webinars:

• Assume that people you do not know will record and transcribe the session, that’s our reality. If someone really wants to record your public event, they will. That’s the world we live in today.

Your quick to do list:

Two things are true at the same time.

First, AI meeting assistants are getting more active, and they are on their way to behaving like early AI agents that can act on your behalf during a call.

Second, uninvited tools can quietly join your meetings, record everything, and take that data places you never intended.

So this is a good moment to:

• Update your AI and meeting policies to include verifying AI assistants in private meetings.
• Experiment with talking to your AI meeting assistant during a meeting. It’s awkward at first, but so was taking photos with your phone at some point. Remember?
• If you haven’t started using AI meeting assistants, please do. This is at the very heart of our AI radar. The late majority is already in. If you are not using them, you are becoming a laggard. Join the rest of us.

2026 is turning into a big year for agentic AI, the kind that actually does things for you inside the apps you are already using and taps into your other apps too.

Start experimenting now, so when this is mainstream you feel informed and confident, not catching up.

Thank you to Jo Buchanan for sharing the Cyber Alberta story with me.

Thank you to MVA Bennett for allowing me to share bits of the recording of our experimentation with voice activating our meeting assistants.

About the author…

Inbal Rodney

Guiding Firms in Adopting AI and Automation
Keynote speaker | AI Workshops | Executive briefings | Consulting CIO

Inbal Rodnay is a recognised leader in innovation with a focus on the practical application of AI in professional services, and how it will change the type of work we do and how we interact with each other.

Inbal Rodnay helps professional services firms unlock the power of AI and automation. She speaks to accountants, lawyers, and other professionals who want to move beyond dabbling and start using technology with confidence, strategy, and heart.

With a background in innovation leadership, Inbal brings a rare mix of technical expertise and real-world understanding. Her clients include CA ANZ, CPA Australia, Intuit, ProVision and Law Australasia, and she has helped some of the world’s most successful firms put AI into practical action.

Since 2017, Inbal has spoken to over 30,000 professionals across Australia and New Zealand, often delivering the top-rated talk at major conferences. She is known for her humorous, pragmatic, and insightful style — breaking complex topics into clear, relatable steps for professional audiences.