How To Turn Off AI Companion In Zoom on AIAngels

If you just heard the term "Zoom AI Companion" and want it gone, here is the plain version. Zoom AI Companion is a meeting assistant built into the Zoom app. It can summarize calls, take notes, and answer questions during meetings. It is not a chatbot you talk to for fun.

To switch it off on your own account, open Zoom on desktop, click your profile photo in the top right, pick Settings, then click the Zoom AI Companion tab on the left. Toggle each feature off: Meeting Summary, Smart Recording, and in-meeting questions.

If you are an admin and want it off for the whole team, sign in at zoom.us, go to Account Management, then AI Companion, and disable the features there. Changes apply to new meetings.

Side note: AI Angels is a different kind of AI companion, made for text chat, not meetings.

Zoom AI Companion is Zoom's built-in AI assistant, rolled out broadly in 2023 on paid Business and higher subscriptions. It operates across multiple product surfaces automatically: generating post-meeting summaries, transcribing conversations, suggesting full chat message drafts, answering questions about meeting content mid-call, and assisting with whiteboard annotations. None of these features require explicit opt-in from individual account members. The account owner or IT admin enables the suite at the account level, and many users discover it has been running in the background without realizing it.

The feature is absent on the free Zoom Basic plan. It requires a paid Zoom One Business, Business Plus, or Enterprise tier. Even then, what AI Companion can do depends on what the organization's admin has activated. Participants receive a notification banner when AI features like Meeting Summary are active during a session, which is often the first moment users realize the feature exists and start searching for how to turn off AI Companion in Zoom.

[MIT Technology Review has reported extensively on enterprise AI tools recording workplace conversations](https://www.technologyreview.com) and the growing regulatory pressure around consent and data retention. Understanding exactly what AI Companion processes is the right starting point before deciding which features to disable.

If you have admin access to your organization's Zoom account, you can disable AI Companion features organization-wide or lock them so individual users cannot re-enable them. Start by signing in to your Zoom Admin Portal at zoom.us, then navigate to Account Management, then Account Settings, and select the AI Companion tab. From there you will see individual toggles for Meeting Summary, Meeting Questions, Smart Recording, and Chat Compose. Toggle off the features you want disabled, click Save, and use the lock icon on each feature if you want to prevent user-level overrides.

Admins can also apply different AI Companion settings by user group. Under User Management, select Groups, then choose a specific group and configure separate AI Companion rules. This works well when one department needs meeting summaries but another handles confidential discussions where AI processing creates compliance risk.

One firm limitation: disabling AI Companion going forward does not erase summaries already generated. Past summaries remain in the Zoom web portal under Recordings and in any email threads where Zoom distributed them automatically. If retroactive deletion is a requirement, you will need to address each meeting record individually or engage Zoom's enterprise support for bulk options.

If you are a regular Zoom account member without admin privileges, your ability to disable AI Companion depends entirely on whether your organization's admin has granted user-level control. When they have, sign in at zoom.us and go to Settings, then AI Companion. You will find toggles for Meeting Summary, Chat Compose, and other features your admin has made adjustable. Each toggle you disable applies only to your own account; other users are not affected.

If the AI Companion tab is grayed out or missing entirely from your settings menu, the admin has locked the configuration. Your organization has standardized the setting across all accounts and individual override is not permitted. The correct path here is to contact your IT department or account admin and request a policy exception, with a documented reason for the change.

One in-meeting control always available regardless of admin policy: if you are the meeting host, you can decline to start or can manually stop a meeting recording. This does not shut off all AI features, but it limits what Meeting Summary can process during that specific session. For recurring meetings, the setting must be applied each time unless you configure default meeting options inside your personal Zoom account settings.

Zoom Chat has its own AI Companion layer, separate from meeting-related AI features. The primary function here is Chat Compose, which suggests full message drafts in real-time as you type in Zoom's messaging interface. There may also be AI-generated thread summaries depending on your account version. These settings live in a different section than meeting controls, which is why users often disable meeting AI but continue to see suggestions appearing in chat.

For admins: navigate to Admin Portal, then Account Settings, then AI Companion, then Chat. Find Chat Compose and toggle it off. Lock the setting if you want to prevent users from re-enabling it. For individual users with override permissions: go to Settings, then AI Companion, then the Chat section.

Understanding how to turn off AI companion in Zoom Chat is a distinct step from disabling meeting summaries because the two features are independently toggled. Disabling one does not disable the other. Users on fast-paced teams often disable Chat Compose specifically because the inline AI suggestions interrupt their writing pace and occasionally get sent before editing is complete. The setting takes effect immediately after saving — no restart required.

Privacy and consent are the dominant drivers. When meeting summaries are auto-generated and distributed to participants — and sometimes to managers who were not in the meeting — employees interpret this as surveillance rather than productivity support. Legal and compliance teams in regulated industries like healthcare, finance, and law frequently mandate disabling Zoom AI Companion because of data residency obligations and confidentiality rules. A discussion with a client or a personnel review should not generate a machine-readable transcript sitting on a third-party server.

Zoom's terms specify that AI Companion data is processed on Zoom's infrastructure, and data retention policies vary by plan and region. Many general counsels advise disabling the feature by default until a full data-processing agreement review is complete, particularly for organizations operating under GDPR, HIPAA, or similar frameworks.

[Pew Research Center findings](https://www.pewresearch.org) consistently show that a majority of Americans express concern about how employers use AI to monitor workplace activity — a sentiment that IT administrators are increasingly factoring into their tool configurations.

There is also a practical accuracy argument: automated summaries misattribute decisions and miss nuance often enough that teams spend time correcting the record instead of acting on it. For organizations with documented minutes processes, AI summaries create a competing record rather than a useful one.

Zoom AI Companion is a workplace productivity layer, built to summarize calls and draft work emails. AIAngels is something different entirely: a personal AI companion platform designed for ongoing conversation, emotional connection, and customization. The two serve opposite purposes, and if you have grown frustrated with AI embedded in productivity tools, AIAngels offers a deliberate alternative.

AIAngels provides a real free tier — unlimited text chat with any of 70+ companions, no credit card required, no daily message ceiling. Compare that to most AI companion apps, where free access expires after 50 messages or one day. Replika removed its adult features in February 2023; Character.AI flags content mid-conversation. AIAngels lets adults engage without content filters interrupting the experience.

Premium plans start at $3.25/mo on the 12-month annual subscription. That price includes image generation without per-image credit gating, voice messages without added fees, and companion memory that does not degrade across months of conversation. You can also build a custom companion from scratch, defining appearance, personality, and interests. The pricing is flat with no token economy and no surprise upcharges. What AIAngels states is what you pay.