Meeting AI Assistants Guidelines
Recording/transcription overview
This document is a supplement to AI Guidelines that were reviewed by President’s Cabinet on May 6th, 2025, and focuses on AI meeting assistants. For the purposes of recording, transcribing, and summarizing meetings, interviews, etc., Campus Technology advises all Endicott faculty, staff, and researchers to use Zoom over other third-party resources, including but not limited to meeting assistants like Otter AI. Concerns for data privacy and security, application support, cost and compliance with legal and other binding regulations have informed this specification.
Additional care should be taken at any time where sensitive, non-public, or confidential information is discussed. Meeting assistant services should not be used in these instances unless previously reviewed and approved by Campus Technology. Zoom accounts are freely (and by default) available to all Endicott faculty and staff; these accounts afford users enterprise-level data security and privacy. And in the case of student researchers and research assistants, supervising faculty may request a Zoom account on behalf of the student. The Zoom account is at no cost to the student or academic school (Click here to submit a request).
Policy rationale
Privacy and Data Security: A number of AI services explicitly claim ownership of user-inputted data in user agreements and terms of service documents. Frequently, such policies also define the right to use personal and private information gathered during application usage for corporate purposes. If information related to the College’s students, faculty, or staff is entered into an AI system that is not managed by Endicott, such as the data contained in an audio file for transcription, the College will have lost control of that information, including who has access to it.
In our research, Campus Technology has discovered that Otter.ai has a particularly problematic privacy policy.
Otter users assume the risk of their data being leaked; Otter indemnifies itself.
Otter trains its AI models on user-uploaded data.
Data entered into Otter can be transferred to the buyer should Otter be acquired.
Otter may store data internationally in a variety of jurisdictions.
Otter shares user data with advertisers.
Support: With the ever-changing landscape of AI- and web-based services, Campus Technology groups must concentrate training and resources on the best AI solutions that address the largest number of needs for the largest number of users. Not all services will meet security and privacy needs for the College’s safety and security, and these are among the reasons why some services may need to be disallowed.
Efficiency/Uniformity: Zoom is the established and primary means of teleconferencing for the College; therefore, Zoom is, and will continue to be, compatible with officially supported systems at Endicott (vs. new add-on services). Zoom is a one-stop solution that is a known quantity to our community, and as such will reduce the need for data storage and data transfers across systems and devices. Additionally, licensing redundant AI products is prohibitively expensive.
Offering convenient and safe alternatives
Ahead of the ’25–’26 academic year and in line with peer institutions, Campus Technology will be providing support and guidelines to the Endicott community around the risks posed by the “meeting assistants” class of AI products (e.g., Harvard’s prohibition on unapproved meeting assistants). Endicott provides Zoom licenses to all employees that entail enterprise-level data protections; within Zoom, moreover, Endicott users have access to robust recording, transcription, and AI summarization features that are comparable to those offered by meeting assistant products.
Users can choose to record Zoom meetings to the cloud, where the recordings will be provided with transcriptions automatically. This functionality is present for users using Zoom in-browser, in the Zoom application, or on a mobile device like a smartphone; cloud recording may also be an option for screen-sharing participants who join the built-in Zoom board stationed in College Hall’s conference room.
Zoom’s AI companion will be rolled out to users interested in AI-generated summaries of meetings (e.g., an executive summary or action items and next steps).
Campus Technology would be glad to provide tutorials and demonstrations to any executives and administrative assistants who would like to leverage meeting assistant technologies.
Approved AI tools at Endicott
*Enterprise-level data security and privacy; must be logged in with Endicott credentials; list is exclusive
Chatbots
AI productivity tools
AI meeting assistants
Prohibited AI tools at Endicott
*List is not comprehensive; only use approved tools with non-public Endicott information (see previous)
Campus Technology will help Endicott units migrate legacy content from unapproved AI platforms to Endicott-managed AI platforms. Subscription autorenewals should be canceled.
Chatbots
ChatGPT
Claude
Perplexity
AI productivity tools
AI meeting assistants