Earlier this week, I had a very short, very disconcerting Teams meeting. Shortly after the meeting began, I and the other participant noticed an AI bot show up. Neither of us were aware we’d invited it, which as you can imagine, was puzzling and more than a little disconcerting to both of us. Believing discretion is the better part of valor, we both agreed to abandon the meeting, and I did some googling.
It turns out it was my fault (ultimately) the bot showed up in the meeting. Last week, I’d attended a meeting where one of the hosts had invited this bot to take notes. Following the meeting, the bot sent a meeting summary to all the attendees (so far, so good). Having missed a specific point I wanted to look up, I tried accessing the meeting transcript, and was prompted to create an account.
What I hadn’t seen was the (in my opinion) extremely aggressive default behavior on the part of this platform to just go ahead and invite itself to any and all of my future meetings – even those in which I was a guest!
In hindsight, there are at least a couple of lessons to be learned from this experience. First, as a consumer, all those damned EULAs actually matter. Choose your connections with care, and consider the permissions you bestow on apps. It may be a bit inconvenient to pass on an app that seems a bit greedy, but every once in a while, it just may save your bacon.
The other lesson is offered from the perspective of a product designer, and it requires a bit of empathy with respect to your user / audience. Please consider - realistically - the behaviors your users might actually expect of your product. In the case of this meeting note-taker, it’s appropriate to have the bot offer its services when I create meetings. Ideally, I’d have liked to see something interactive the first time the bot has the opportunity to hop on a meeting, and if I elect, “yes”, I think it would be appropriate to ask if I want that to be the behavior for future meetings. Offer a service to me, but don’t surprise me by joining behind my back!
I also believe there should have been distinct behaviors for meetings I host vs. meetings I join as a guest. In my opinion, it would be appropriate for the bot to ask to attend any meeting I join as a guest. Finally, when joining, the behavior I saw in the meeting was very poorly-sequenced. When the bot joined my meeting unexpectedly, it hung around for a good 30 seconds before offering anything in the chat window – a definite faux-pas. I’d expect to immediately see a message indicating who invited the bot and offering actions to stop the recording if desired. Having this message show up half-a-minute into the meeting is no bueno.
The era of AI is upon us. Platforms can now do more for us than ever before, and what we’ve seen so far is just the beginning. However, usability / UX practices need to be engaged for this journey so that these capabilities can be seen as helpful and not subversive or destructive. Help you expect will always be welcome, but please beware helping in ways that aren’t expected - at best, this will be interpreted as “handling”, and at worst, it’s an unwelcome intrusion. The first interactions you have with a new customer are precious - don’t botch them and risk losing a customer forever by overstepping your welcome!