There’s a new kind of meeting attendee showing up on Zoom, Teams and Google Meet, the silent, invisible kind that never turns on their camera, never unmutes, and never speaks. No, it’s not your disinterested coworker. It’s their AI note taker.
And you know what? That’s a good thing.
The Washington Post recently spotlighted how AI bots are increasingly standing in for humans during virtual meetings. These bots listen, record, transcribe, and summarize — doing exactly what many of us end up doing when stuck in meetings we have no reason to be in.
Let’s be real: not every meeting needs every invitee to participate. Sometimes, you’re invited out of courtesy. Other times, it’s political. Often, you sit there, adding nothing, gaining little, and losing time. If that’s the case, sending a bot makes perfect sense. You get the summary, the action items, and none of the soul-sapping small talk.
Critics will argue there’s a loss of human connection. But here’s the truth: if you weren’t going to say anything, your presence wasn’t adding connection anyway. Bots don’t stifle discussion — unnecessary meetings do. When too many people are in the room (physically or virtually) just to observe, the conversation rarely gets better. It gets bloated.
We should stop pretending that showing up in silence adds value. If you don’t need to be part of the discussion, sending a bot is actually a smart move. It signals you respect your own time, and others’ too. It frees you up to focus on work that matters, while still keeping you in the loop.
Of course, this doesn’t mean every meeting should become a bot fest. If a decision is being made that requires your voice, show up and speak. But if your role is passive, don’t feel guilty about letting technology do what it does best — listen and remember.
Let the bots attend the meetings where your presence doesn’t matter. Save your voice for when it does.
Because if your presence in a meeting isn’t needed? Just don’t go. The bot isn’t the fix. A better calendar is.