Microsoft Teams now lets you turn AI off mid-meeting

Until now, if your Teams meetings had Copilot, Facilitator or Recap switched on, that was a setting made before the call, usually by IT, and rarely revisited. Microsoft rolled out an in-meeting toggle in July 2026, after enough customers pushed back on AI features (especially Facilitator, which summarises and nudges the conversation as it happens) running without anyone in the room choosing that. Now an organizer or presenter can turn any of the three off, or back on, from the meeting controls menu, mid-call.

Two details matter more than the headline. First, only organizers and presenters get the toggle, and it needs a Teams Premium or Microsoft 365 Copilot licence, so check who on your team actually has that access before you assume everyone can flip it. Second, transcription and AI are linked: starting a transcript switches Copilot and Recap on automatically, even if someone turned them off earlier. If a meeting needs to be genuinely AI-free, both transcription and the AI toggle have to be off, not just one.

The useful move here is not turning AI off everywhere. It is deciding, as a team, when it should be off, client calls where someone hasn't consented to being recorded or summarised, sensitive HR conversations, anything under an NDA, and making that a default rather than something one person remembers to click. Write it down as a one-line rule, tell the team, and check occasionally that new hires know it too.