(Updated) Microsoft Teams: Identify external bots joining your Teams meetings

Updated September 22, 2026: We have updated the timeline. Thank you for your patience.

Introduction

AI‑powered meeting assistant bots—such as transcription and summarization services—are increasingly used to enhance productivity in online meetings. While these tools can be valuable, some bots may access meetings without the knowledge or consent of the meeting organizer or the hosting tenant, which can create data security, privacy, and compliance risks.

To help organizations protect meeting content and increase visibility into automated participants, Microsoft Teams is introducing a new capability that detects external meeting assistant bots as they attempt to join meetings. This update gives organizers greater awareness and control and provides administrators with clear controls to manage how detected bots are handled in meetings hosted across the organization.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 558107.

When this will happen

• Targeted Release: We will begin rolling out in mid-May 2026 and expect to complete by early June 2026.
• General Availability (Worldwide): We will begin rolling out in early June 2026 and expect to complete by end of October 2026 (previously mid-September).
• General Availability (GCC): We will begin rolling out in early June 2026 and expect to complete by end of October 2026 (previously mid-September).

How this will affect your organization

Who is affected

• All organizations using Microsoft Teams meetings, including GCC tenants
• Meeting organizers and Teams administrators

What will happen

• Teams will detect external meeting bots as they attempt to join meetings hosted by your organization.
• When detected, bots will be clearly labeled in the meeting lobby experience.
• Note: There might still be bots that are undetected by the system due to their intrinsic behavior. Please inform your users to report them out directly from the app/meeting. This will help us improve our detection system.
• Organizers will be able to:
• approve or deny detected bots from the meeting lobby.
• see clearly which participants have been identified as bots.
• remove detected bots during the meeting if necessary.
• These organizer controls are designed to help ensure that bot participation in meetings is an intentional and informed decision.
• A new meeting policy will be available in the Teams admin center that allows admins to configure how detected bots are handled (do not detect bots, require approval). In the future, we intend to provide more granular controls to admins, as appropriate.
• Bot detection will be enabled by default for all tenants.
• Teams will continue improving detection accuracy; however, some bots may not be detected in all scenarios.

What you can do to prepare

No action is required at this time.

However, we recommend that Teams admins:

• Review the new meeting policy in the Teams admin center once it becomes available.
• Keep the default setting, which requires organizers to approve detected bots before they join meetings (recommended).
• Choose a stricter or more permissive option based on your organization’s collaboration and compliance requirements.
• Inform meeting organizers that they may see new indicators and approval prompts when detected bots attempt to join meetings.
• Update internal helpdesk or governance documentation if your organization documents meeting join or lobby controls behavior.
• Monitor future Message center updates for expanded administrative controls.

Compliance considerations