Copilot in Teams Meetings Is Changing: Transcription Will No Longer Be the Default

A change is coming to the default behavior of Microsoft 365 Copilot in Teams meetings that may cause some confusion.

From mid-September, the default experience for new tenants and users without a customized Teams meetings policy will be for Copilot to operate without transcription rather than with transcription.

But Copilot uses the transcript to give you answers. If there's no transcript, how does it work?

The option for Copilot without transcript has been available since the initial release of the product, and by default it has been an option that is offered in the individual meeting settings and can be limited by Teams policy. Copilot without transcription allows Copilot to work in the meeting, but upon its conclusion your interactions with Copilot disappear and there is no record for features like intelligent recap or AI insights.

Behind the scenes the technical implementation of this involves an ephemeral transcript that is surfaced only to Copilot and not to users that is populated during the period a user selects to use Copilot without transcription during a meeting. Any Copilot-enabled user's decision to use Copilot initiates that transcription and all other users can access insights related to that meeting using Copilot from the point in time when Copilot was first enabled.

Understanding how this works is important as because Copilot's access to the meeting's content is dependent on first Copilot use by any user and then that record is accessed by every Copilot user, it's possible that some users (e.g. late joiners) might be able to access AI generated content about aspects of the meeting they were not present for and (according to Teams) was not transcribed.

Teams alerts you to Copilot use in meetings in a similar way to how it shows you that transcription or recording is available. From the perspective of having enduring records and insights from your meeting, you should consider recording/transcription to be distinct from Copilot activation. But from the perspective of maximizing meeting content protection and limiting the potential for any user to see AI-generated content insights, you might want to think of Copilot activation as exposing similar risks to transcription activation.

Microsoft has not communicated a rationale for making this change. Personally, I see Copilot without transcription as a worrying default, as I believe it creates an expectation for users that is perhaps incorrect. Everyone can understand transcription being turned on when Copilot is activated without any additional technical training. However, to fully understand the implications of how Teams and Copilot interact with your data when Copilot is available but transcription not requires a much deeper grasp of the technology.

My suggestion: Use Teams meeting policies to control the availability of this feature and ensure those who have access to it have the knowledge to use it appropriately.

Posted on Linkedin on 08/24/2025 -> View Linkedin Post here