Add AI notetaker guidance to Zoom meeting guidelines

[TineoC]

Problem

There is no guidance in the Zoom guidelines about third-party AI notetakers (Otter.ai, Fireflies.ai, Fathom, Read.ai, etc.) joining K8s SIG/WG Zoom calls. Risks include:

• Unconsented recording — participants may not know an AI bot is transcribing
• Data exposure — meeting content sent to third-party servers
• Moderation gap — bots do not respond to Code of Conduct interventions

The community has adopted AI policies for Slack (PR #8926) and PRs (PR #8682), but Zoom is not covered.

Proposal

Update communication/zoom-guidelines.md to recommend that SIG/WG hosts enable the following Zoom settings in the web portal:

• Enforce authentication — enable "Only authenticated users can join meetings" and restrict to Zoom sign-in.
• Block known notetaker domains — add domains under "Block users in specific domains from joining meetings and webinars" (e.g. otter.ai, fireflies.ai, read.ai, sembly.ai, fellow.app)
• Enable CAPTCHA for guest users
• Disable third-party recording apps — block known apps in Zoom Marketplace under Manage → Blocked Apps (e.g. Otter.ai, Fireflies.ai, Fathom, MeetGeek, Tactiq, Airgram, Gong)

These settings can be applied at the account, group, or per-meeting level. If a bot still gets through, hosts should remove it and lock the meeting.

Next steps

• Discuss and refine wording
• If agreed, open a PR updating zoom-guidelines.md
• Notify @zoom-admins and SIG leads

/cc @kubernetes/sig-contributor-experience
/cc @zoom-admins

[TineoC]

/sig contributor-experience

[pnbrown]

I agree with the premise of this issue and the guidelines are straightforward. Has this been discussed at one of the ContribEx meetings?

[TineoC]

1. Use captcha or enforce a passcode on calendar invites for Zoom meetings (sig-etcd meetings as an example)
2. Add a blurb on google docs meeting notes for reminding contributors that AI-notetakers are prohibited

[TineoC]

I agree with the premise of this issue and the guidelines are straightforward. Has this been discussed at one of the ContribEx meetings?

It was initially discussed on today's meeting for SIG Contribex (Jun 24 2026)

[chris-short]

Not so much enforce passcodes; most meetings already have a passcode (if not all). The key is not to put the passcode in the Zoom link on Calendar invites. Just the link to the meeting, meaning users would need to enter the passcode before joining. Not great for new people but it's a solid way to not have this problem.

CAPTCHA is a Zoom Marketplace thing, and I am not sure if we use the Marketplace or can.  It'd be net new to set up, too. Also, people dislike CAPTCHA, myself included.

For the SIG ContribEx meeting we were just in, I can confirm I kicked out notetakers from read.ai and fireflies.ai. Those domains are already being blocked in the ContribEx Zoom account, so that just doesn't work for some reason. That's also a setting from a higher level account; I cannot change or modify it. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

I don't see an app blocking mechanism in the Zoom settings after searching for it.

I don't like the idea of forcing everyone in the project to be an authenticated Zoom user, as it's another barrier to entry. In general, we don't want to increase the barrier to folks joining meetings, which is key to being a new contributor. But if the AI Notetakers get bad enough, we could definitely do this, though I'd rather it be a last resort. I can be overruled or wrong, too.

I don't like the idea of waiting rooms either, but that is another potential route.

For either forcing authenticated users or waiting rooms, we'd want to run that by Steering only if we decide to go that route.

None of these options are great but I think we should update the guidance to clearly state we don't allow notetakers. Perhaps enforcement mechanisms should be discussed separately.