Does Zoom have an AI note taker? My Notes, AI Companion, and the privacy catch

Zoom does have an AI note taker. The product Zoom markets for that job today is My Notes. Alongside it sits Meeting Summary, the in-meeting AI recap that people still search for under the older AI Companion name (Zoom's broader AI surface is now often labelled ZoomMate).

The reason the question keeps coming up is that the button depends on your plan, your client version, and sometimes your admin. Here is what Zoom's own pages say each feature does, what Basic actually gets, where the notes live, and what to do when Zoom's cloud is the wrong place for the conversation.

What My Notes actually does

My Notes is a personal note-taking feature inside the Zoom Workplace app. Zoom's AI note taker product page describes it as capturing conversations on Zoom, on Microsoft Teams and Google Meet, and in person, without a bot joining the call as a participant.

You can type manual notes during the meeting and turn on transcription so Zoom's AI fills in what was said. After you finish, My Notes can produce a summary with key takeaways and action items. Zoom's My Notes technical overview draws a line against Meeting Summary: Meeting Summary is a broad, high-level recap of a hosted Zoom meeting; My Notes can be more granular and mixes your typed notes with the transcript.

Zoom's Using My Notes help article is clear on ownership: the notes you create are yours and are not automatically shared with the host or other participants. You will still see a visible indicator in a Zoom meeting when My Notes transcription is active, and hosts on a recent client can stop transcription for one participant or for everyone.

Meeting Summary (the AI Companion people mean)

Meeting Summary is the other half of the answer. The host or co-host starts it from the Zoom AI icon during a Zoom meeting. Participants see that AI features are active. If the host shares the result, signed-in invitees can get the summary by email and, when continuous meeting chat is on, in the meeting's group chat. Zoom documents this in Using Meeting Summary with AI.

Only the host and co-host can start or stop Meeting Summary from the in-meeting controls. Participants can ask the host to start Zoom AI if it is not running. That is why a guest in someone else's meeting often never sees a summary of their own: the host's settings and plan decide.

Plan gates and what Basic really gets

Zoom's My Notes pricing page, checked 6 November 2026, lists these US list prices:

• Workplace Basic: AI note-taking with My Notes for 3 uses per month, meeting summaries for 3 hosted meetings per month, and 20 AI queries per month. Meeting length is still capped at 40 minutes on Basic.
• My Notes standalone: $10.00 per user per month billed monthly, or $8.33 billed annually, with unlimited AI note-taking and unlimited meeting summaries for hosted Zoom meetings.
• Workplace Pro: $16.99 per user per month billed monthly, or $14.16 billed annually, with My Notes and unlimited meeting summaries included.
• ZoomMate: $20.00 monthly or $16.67 annually on the same page, with unlimited AI note-taking plus agentic credits and workflows.

Zoom also says My Notes may not be available in every region or industry vertical, and admins can disable it. If the icon is missing on a paid seat, check account settings before assuming the plan is wrong.

How to enable it

For My Notes, open the Zoom web portal under Settings → Notes → My Notes. Turn on My Notes, allow Zoom AI to generate content in My Notes, and enable transcribing meetings with My Notes. Grant microphone and system-audio permission when you want transcripts outside a pure Zoom-meeting session.

In a Zoom meeting on desktop client 6.7.5 or higher, click the My Notes icon at the top of the window and start taking notes. Outside Zoom, open the My Notes tab in the Workplace app, create a note, and allow system audio so Teams, Meet, or an in-person conversation can be transcribed.

For Meeting Summary, as the host: open the Zoom AI icon, select Meeting summary, and click Start Zoom AI. You can also set summaries to start automatically when your meetings begin.

Where the notes live, and the privacy catch

Zoom's My Notes technical page states that when My Notes is active, audio is streamed to the Zoom cloud for speech recognition and post-meeting note generation. After transcription finishes, Zoom says that audio is deleted, while the notes and transcripts remain in your Zoom account, under My Notes in Zoom Hub. By default they are not shared with other participants, but authorised account admins can view them. Meeting Summary output likewise lives in Zoom's cloud (Hub, Summaries, email, and optionally the meeting chat).

For most work meetings that already live in Zoom's calendar and recordings, that matches how you already use Zoom. For a conversation that should not exist on any vendor's servers, "no bot" is not the same as "no cloud." Zoom's product FAQ says it does not use customer meeting content to train its or its third-party AI models; that is a training claim, not a claim that the notes stay on your device.

Native live transcript vs AI notes

Separate from My Notes and Meeting Summary, Zoom has a live Meeting transcript that can run without a cloud recording on Pro, Business, or Enterprise when an admin enables it. That path, and the cloud-recording VTT, are covered in how to transcribe a Zoom meeting without recording it. A transcript is raw text. My Notes and Meeting Summary are the AI note-taker layer: summaries, takeaways, action items, and (for My Notes) your typed notes mixed in.

When bots or a local app make more sense

If you are not the host, if Basic's three uses are gone, if your admin turned AI off, or if the content should stay off Zoom's servers, Zoom's built-in note taker is unavailable or the wrong tool.

The usual alternatives are a third-party bot (Otter, Fireflies, Read AI, Fathom and similar), which joins and processes the call on the vendor's servers, or a local app. How to remove bots that keep auto-joining is in stop AI notetaker bots from joining meetings. Google Meet and Teams have the same split; see Does Google Meet have an AI note taker? and Does Microsoft Teams have an AI note taker?.

A local note taker records the call audio as your computer plays it and writes the notes there. Zoom shows nothing new in the participant list, and it works in meetings you did not organise. Check whether that tool then uploads the audio or keeps the pipeline local; most "bot-free" tools still use a cloud. The distinction is in AI note takers that don't join your meeting.

Where Private Notetaker fits, and what it does not do

Private Notetaker is the local option with the pipeline on your machine. Press record before the Zoom call; when it ends you have a transcript, a summary, decisions and action items produced on your own hardware. Mac (Apple Silicon) and Windows 10/11. No Zoom Workplace plan, no My Notes licence, no bot, no Zoom Hub copy of the conversation. There is a 7-day free trial.

What it does not do: it is English only, where Zoom Meeting Summary lists over 30 languages and My Notes lists fewer; there is no shared team library inside Zoom; and it does not inherit Zoom's participant names the way an in-meeting Zoom feature does. If your organisation already pays for Workplace Pro or ZoomMate and the notes can live in Zoom's cloud, My Notes and Meeting Summary are already paid for.

See how it works with Zoom, or try it free and see pricing.

Zoom feature behaviour and prices are from Zoom's My Notes product page, My Notes pricing page, Using My Notes, Using Meeting Summary with AI, Managing My Notes, and the My Notes technical overview, all checked 6 November 2026. US list prices change; region and admin settings can hide features.