Who can see my AI meeting notes?
Whoever controls the account the notes were captured on — which is usually not the same as who was in the meeting. That one fact answers most versions of this question. If the call was summarized by the platform's own AI (Zoom AI Companion, Teams recap, Google Meet notes, Webex), the record sits in the hosting organization's account, is commonly available to attendees and sometimes shared automatically, and is reachable by that organization's administrators under whatever retention policy already applies. If a colleague's notetaker bot was in the call, the transcript is in their vendor account: you generally can't see it, and you can't delete it either — only they can. If your company provisioned the tool for you, expect a workspace, an admin console, and access that outlives your employment. If you pay for the tool yourself and it runs on your own machine, the notes are yours, though the vendor's transcription and summarization pipeline still processes them. One thing no tool changes: your own private notes don't make the meeting private, because anyone else on the call may be capturing it too.
Last updated August 20, 2026
Whoever controls the account the notes were captured on. That’s the whole answer, and it’s worth stating plainly because the intuition most people start with is wrong: AI meeting notes don’t belong to the meeting, they belong to the account that made them. Five people can sit in the same call and end up with five records in five different places, each with a different audience and a different deletion policy — and none of them can see or erase anyone else’s.
Once you hold that, every awkward version of the question resolves without guesswork. Your employer, the host, the other attendees, and the vendor all have different visibility, and which one applies depends on whose tool ran, not on who was in the room.
Where the record actually lives
| Who captured it | Where the record lives | Who can see it by default | Who can delete it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Platform-native AI (Zoom AI Companion, Teams recap, Meet notes, Webex) | The hosting organization’s account on that platform | Commonly the attendees, via the recap, chat, or an auto-shared doc; plus that org’s administrators | An administrator, under the org’s retention policy |
| A colleague’s notetaker bot (Otter, Fireflies, Fathom, tl;dv on their login) | Their account with that vendor | Them, and whoever they share with | Only them |
| A notetaker your company provisioned | Your company’s workspace on the vendor | You, workspace administrators, and whoever the sharing defaults include | You and your admins — and the org keeps it if you leave |
| A notetaker you bought yourself | Your personal account with that vendor | You | You |
| A bot-free tool on your own machine (Canary, Granola) | Your own account and device | You | You |
In every row, the tool’s own processing pipeline is also in the picture — cloud speech-to-text and a language model handle the content on the way to becoming notes. That’s a separate question with its own answer: are AI meeting notetakers safe covers what to check about retention, subprocessors, and training.
Two questions that constantly get conflated
This topic gets muddled because “private” is doing double duty. There are really two questions, and they have different answers:
- Who can see the notes? Decided by whose account they’re on. Bots and bot-free tools are identical here — an Otter transcript on your personal login and a bot-free summary on your laptop are equally invisible to your colleagues.
- Who knows the notes exist? Decided by the capture method. A bot announces itself by appearing in the participant list. Platform-native AI announces itself with a banner. A tool reading your computer’s system audio shows nothing to anyone.
That second row is the one to be honest about. Removing the bot from the participant list makes capture less visible to other people, not more private from your employer — and it moves the disclosure job onto you. A smaller footprint raises the obligation to mention it rather than removing it, which is why how to tell participants you’re using an AI notetaker exists as its own page.
Can my employer see them?
If the notes were captured on a company account, work from the assumption that yes, they can — and that this is ordinary rather than sinister. Platform-native summaries sit inside the tenant your organization already administers, governed by the retention and eDiscovery policy that governs everything else there. Business and enterprise tiers of third-party notetakers typically add a shared workspace, an admin view, retention settings, and export — that’s what companies are buying, and it’s why the record generally stays behind when a person leaves.
If you pay for a tool yourself, on your own account, your employer doesn’t receive a copy by default. Two things temper that:
- A managed laptop is still a managed laptop. Endpoint management can usually see what’s installed, and depending on the policy in force, more than that. This is the same wall people hit from the other side when their company blocks bots.
- Visibility isn’t permission. Plenty of organizations have a rule about capturing work conversations with unapproved tools. “They can’t see it” doesn’t answer “am I allowed to do it,” and the second question is the one that matters.
The honest framing: work conversations are work records. Choosing a personal tool changes who holds the copy and who is responsible for it. It doesn’t turn a business discussion into a private one, and it isn’t a reason to skip telling people you’re capturing.
Can the host or the other attendees see them?
Usually not — with one large exception that surprises people regularly.
A personal notetaker writes to your account and shows nothing to anyone else. The host can’t read your summary, and neither can the other twelve people on the call. On the flip side, if you’re a guest on someone else’s meeting, you also can’t reach their platform AI or recording: those belong to the hosting organization, which is the core of using an AI notetaker when you’re not the host.
The exception is platform-native AI, because it is a feature of the meeting rather than of you. Depending on the platform and settings, a summary can land in the meeting chat, in a recap tab attendees can open, in a document filed to the calendar event, or in an email to everyone invited. People start it thinking of it as their own notes and are startled when it arrives in the organizer’s inbox. Sharing defaults, packaging, and naming shift often and vary by plan, edition, region, and admin policy — so check the behaviour on your own account rather than trusting a feature list. The trade-offs in full are in Canary vs Zoom AI Companion.
Who can delete them?
The account holder, and in practice only the account holder. This is the part with real consequences, and it runs in both directions.
If a colleague ran a bot on a call you were in, the transcript of everything you said is in their vendor dashboard. You can ask them to delete it; you can’t do it yourself, and removing a bot mid-meeting doesn’t erase what it already captured. Platform-native records follow the hosting organization’s retention schedule, set by an administrator and often fixed for a period regardless of individual preference, and anything under a legal hold generally can’t be deleted at all.
The general lesson is unglamorous but useful: capture is cheap to start and expensive to take back. Agreeing at the top of the call is far easier than unwinding a record afterward.
Where Canary sits
Canary is a real-time, bot-free meeting summarizer. It captures your computer’s system audio (no bot in the call, no plugin) and shows a live, multi-resolution rolling summary — from what’s being said right now to the whole call — so you can catch up the instant your name is called.
On this specific question, that means the notes are on your account: no bot in someone else’s vendor dashboard holding a second copy, no workspace admin console unless your organization sets one up, and no automatic distribution to the invite list. Audio is transcribed and summarized through Canary’s pipeline rather than staying entirely on-device — essentially every hosted notetaker works this way, and what “free” and “private” really cost walks through the one architecture where nothing leaves your machine. What bot-free capture does not do is make you invisible, and it shouldn’t be chosen for that. The complete guide to bot-free meeting notes explains the mechanism; the reason to want it is that nothing joins your call, not that nobody finds out.
The mirror: you’re holding other people’s words
Almost everyone arrives at this question defensively — who can see my notes. It’s worth spending a minute on the reverse, because it’s the version other people are asking about you.
Your meeting notes are a record of what your colleagues, clients, and candidates said, often unguardedly, in a conversation they thought was ephemeral. Whatever access rules you’d want applied to a transcript of your own words apply to theirs:
- Say that you’re capturing, at the start, every time. It’s one sentence, and it converts a discovered record into an agreed one.
- Don’t keep what you don’t need. A summary you’ll act on this week is a different thing from an archive of every call you’ve ever taken. Deleting is the cheapest privacy control there is.
- Think before forwarding. A summary pasted into a channel is seen by people who weren’t in the room and can’t correct it — and AI summaries do get things wrong in ways that read fluently.
- Consent rules vary by region, and they cover what was said, not just how it was recorded. See one-party vs two-party consent, is it legal to record a meeting, and the fuller treatment in notetaker consent and legality.
Who can see your AI meeting notes is a question about accounts. Whether the notes should exist at all is a question for the people in the call — and that one is answered by asking them, not by picking a tool.
Frequently asked questions
Can my employer see my AI meeting notes?
If the notes were captured on a company account, assume yes — and that it's normal rather than a betrayal. Platform-native summaries live in your organization's tenant, and business tiers of third-party notetakers give administrators a workspace view, retention controls, and export; the record also generally stays with the company if you leave. If you pay for a tool yourself, on your own account, your employer doesn't get a copy by default. Two caveats matter more than the tooling: on a managed laptop your employer can usually see what software is installed, and company policy may restrict capturing work meetings with an unapproved tool at all — which is a permission question, not a visibility one. Either way, work conversations are work records; choosing a personal tool changes who holds the copy, not what the conversation was.
Can other people in the meeting see my notes?
Usually not, if the notes are yours. A personal notetaker writes to your account, and other attendees see nothing unless you share it. The big exception is platform-native AI: a Zoom, Teams, Google Meet, or Webex summary belongs to the meeting rather than to you, so it's commonly visible to attendees in the recap or chat, and on some platforms it's emailed or filed to the calendar event automatically — people are regularly surprised that a summary they started went out to everyone invited. Availability and sharing defaults vary by plan, edition, and admin policy, so check the behaviour on your own account before assuming either way.
Who can delete a meeting transcript or recording?
The account holder, and generally only the account holder. If a colleague's notetaker bot captured a call you were on, the transcript of your words sits in their vendor dashboard — asking them to delete it is the only route, and removing the bot mid-meeting doesn't erase what it already captured. For platform-native recordings and summaries, deletion follows the hosting organization's retention policy, which an administrator sets and which may keep the record for a fixed period regardless of what any individual wants. Records under a legal hold typically can't be deleted at all. The practical version: capture is easy to start and hard to take back, which is a reason to agree on it up front.