It starts subtly. A meeting begins, the host scans the participant list, and there it is — a name no one recognizes. Not a late-arriving board member. Not a staff liaison calling in from the road. A bot. An AI notetaker quietly joining the call, sent by someone from somewhere for reasons that aren’t clear.

Then comes another one. And sometimes a third.

The Problem Isn’t the Technology. It’s the Lack of a Framework.

AI notetaking tools — Otter.ai, Fireflies, Fathom, MeetGeek, and others — aren’t inherently villains. They can be helpful when used with clear expectations and proper context, which organizations need to establish.

But in a governed meeting environment — a board of directors, a standing committee, a task force deliberating sensitive policy — “right context” and “right expectations” matter enormously. And right now, most organizations haven’t established either.

Here’s what we’re seeing on the ground:

Multiple bots, no coordination. When individual attendees each bring their own AI notetaker, you can end up with three or four different tools recording the same meeting, producing three or four different versions of what was said. Which one is accurate? Which one is the record? Nobody knows — including the platforms themselves.

They don’t always leave when the meeting ends. Several of these tools remain active in a virtual room after formal adjournment, capturing the informal chatter, the venting, the side conversations that happen when people think the meeting is over. That content was never meant for documentation.

Accuracy is not guaranteed — it’s not even close. AI transcription tools make mistakes. Names get mangled. Motions get misquoted. Nuanced discussion gets flattened into a bullet point that doesn’t reflect what actually happened. These outputs require careful human review before they should be used for anything — and they absolutely should not be passed along to board members or clients without thorough editing.

Sensitive discussions deserve protection. Board and committee meetings routinely involve personnel matters, legal strategy, financial deliberations, and legislative positioning. These conversations should not flow into third-party AI platforms without explicit organizational consent.

AMCI Is Already Responding — and Their Model Is Worth Adopting

We were glad to see that the Association Management Company Institute (AMCI) recently addressed this issue directly with a formal policy for their own committee meetings. Their approach is straightforward and serves as a valuable model for organizations to develop their own AI notetaking policies.

AMCI Meeting Documentation & Recording Policy: To support productive discussions and ensure consistent documentation, AMCI will take official notes during all committee meetings and share them with the full committee following each session. To maintain confidentiality, protect member contributions, and align with AMCI’s information‑sharing practices, individual audio, video, or text recordings (including those generated by AI programs) are not permitted during AMCI committee or subcommittee meetings.

To ensure adherence to this policy, AMCI staff will be removing AI notetakers from all committee meetings going forward.

Additionally, there may be times when AMCI staff record committee or subcommittee meetings to improve the accuracy of the minutes, but these recordings will be promptly destroyed upon completion of the minutes, in compliance with our information-sharing policies.

Clean, clear, and actionable. It establishes who owns the documentation, protects member confidentiality, and removes ambiguity — while still leaving room for staff to use recordings as an internal accuracy tool when needed.

What Association Management Professionals Should Be Doing Now

For those of us who manage board and committee meetings, the AI notetaker issue is a governance matter — and it’s ours to lead. Here are the best practices we’ve put in place at ADG, and that we’re beginning to recommend to the organizations we serve:

Own the meeting room. The staff lead on any virtual board or committee meeting has both the authority and the responsibility to remove unauthorized AI notetakers. Taking action demonstrates leadership and control over meeting confidentiality.

Check the participant list before you start. Make it part of your pre-meeting routine to scan for bots. Common platform names to watch for include Otter.ai, Fireflies, Fathom, tl;dv, Notetaker, and MeetGeek, among others.

End the meeting — don’t just leave. When a meeting concludes, end it for everyone. Simply exiting while leaving the room open allows AI tools to keep recording whatever happens next.

Treat AI output as a rough draft, never a final record. Carefully reviewing AI notes shows professionalism and reassures management professionals of their role in ensuring accuracy before sharing.

Be mindful of what’s captured before and after. AI notetakers record everything from the moment they join — including pre-meeting small talk, technical troubleshooting, and post-adjournment conversation. Remind your teams and your clients that the recording doesn’t know the difference between on the record and off.

Help your clients develop their own policy. The AMCI example is easy to adapt. Clear policies empower staff and board members, reinforcing their confidence in governance decisions.

The Bottom Line

Association management professionals are, at their core, keepers of the record. The minutes we produce are the official documentation of what a governing body decided — not a transcript, not an AI summary, not a bot’s interpretation of what it heard. That distinction matters, and it’s worth protecting.

AI tools are not going away, and we’re not suggesting they should. But the organizations we serve deserve a thoughtful framework for when and how those tools are used in their most important deliberative spaces. Getting ahead of this — with a clear policy, consistent practices, and staff who know what to do — is exactly the kind of proactive governance support that makes association management partnerships valuable.

If your organization hasn’t addressed AI notetakers yet, now is the time. We’re happy to help you think it through.

Kathleen Whalen Van De Loo is President & CEO of Association Development Group, a certified MWBE association management and communications firm with offices in Albany and Buffalo, NY. ADG has served nonprofit and professional associations for 30 years.