Microsoft builds a bouncer to keep bots out of Teams meetings
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Microsoft builds a bouncer to keep bots out of Teams meetings
Allows ISVs to put their names on the door so desirable bots always get in
Simon Sharwood
Simon<br>Sharwood
APAC Editor
Published<br>tue 30 Jun 2026 // 07:11 UTC
Microsoft has built a bouncer to keep bots out of Teams meetings.
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“Bots have begun joining meetings that participants never intended them to attend,” wrote Microsoft product marketing manager Meera Ajam in a Monday post. “For example, after connecting a third-party service to a meeting, some users have found that its bot continues joining future meetings automatically.”
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Ajam thinks bots butting into meetings that include discussion of sensitive matters is a potential security and privacy problem. Your correspondent has personal experience of this when transcription bots add themselves to meetings conducted under non-disclosure agreements.<br>Microsoft has therefore built tech that sees Teams require a human to check a bot’s ID in the “lobby” where guests wait before a meeting. If a human rates a bot as worthy of coming inside, it gets to join the meeting.<br>The software giant says it’s “strengthened Teams' ability to distinguish between bots and human participants as they join a meeting” by using “a combination of behavioral and infrastructure signals to identify bots with a higher degree of accuracy.”
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That’s not a guarantee that Teams will detect all bots, but Microsoft’s tech requires multiple clicks to let a bot attend a meeting. “Admitting a bot should be a deliberate decision, not something that happens by mistake,” Ajam wrote.<br>Some users want bots to attend a meeting. Your correspondent prefers a third-party transcription-bot to Microsoft’s own.<br>The software giant recognizes that and plans to add “a registration path for independent software vendors (ISVs) that build meeting experiences for Microsoft Teams.”<br>That path will mean bot-builders will be able to register with Microsoft and include a self-identification marker in their join requests. “When Teams recognizes that marker, it can identify the bot as a known participant,” Ajam wrote.<br>“We're currently working with a limited set of ISVs to preview this capability and validate the experience before broader availability,” she added, before promising more detail about registrations soon.
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There’s peril in this plan for Microsoft, which could make itself an arbiter of what constitutes a good bot worthy of admission to Teams.<br>Just like bouncers do in real life, often to the chagrin of plain-looking revelers.<br>Microsoft has started rollout of its bot-bouncer. Once it’s in place, the software behemoth will retire the CAPTCHAs it currently uses to put bots in their place. ®
ai and ml<br>software<br>microsoft teams<br>microsoft<br>security<br>privacy
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Microsoft builds a bouncer to keep bots out of Teams meetings
Allows ISVs to put their names on the door so desirable bots always get in
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