Zoom AI Companion vs Teams intelligent recap vs Gemini in Meet: which built-in AI is best for interview notes?

None of the three is built for interviews, so the best one is usually the one your company already pays for, set up carefully. As of October 2026, Zoom's meeting summary (the feature formerly branded AI Companion) is included in paid Zoom Workplace plans and needs no recording; Teams intelligent recap needs Teams Premium or Microsoft's AI assistant license and is richest when the interview is recorded; and Gemini's "Take notes for me" in Google Meet needs the organizer to be on Business Standard or above. All three can send their summary to people outside your organization, including the candidate, unless you restrict sharing first.

This page puts them side by side. Each platform has its own detailed page: Zoom's AI for interviews, Teams intelligent recap for interviews and Gemini in Google Meet for interviews.

How do Zoom, Teams and Gemini compare for interview notes?

From each vendor's own support and admin pages, as of October 2026.

Sources, as of October 2026: Zoom pricing, using meeting summary, meeting summary settings, custom AI message, summary auto-deletion, call summary, Zoom AI in third-party meetings and My Notes; Microsoft Teams Premium licensing, Teams plans and pricing, intelligent recap for calls and meetings, Recap in Microsoft Teams, intelligent recap data, recording expiration, recording notification and participant agreement; Google Take notes for me, admin settings, participant consent and Workspace pricing.

Which one is best for interviews?

• Zoom's meeting summary is the easiest to use well: it needs no recording, sits in plans many companies already have, and its sharing and deletion settings are granular. Best for: Zoom-first teams that schedule and host their own interviews.
• Teams intelligent recap is the most useful for reviewing a long panel, because speaker markers and chapters let you jump to each answer, but those need the interview recorded and every interviewer licensed. Best for: Microsoft-standardized companies that already record interviews and have Teams Premium.
• Gemini's Take notes for me gives a tidy document with next steps, but it is a paraphrase and depends entirely on the organizer's plan. Best for: Google Workspace companies whose interviews are on their own Meet links.

The tie-breaker is rarely the AI. It is where your interviews actually happen and who hosts them. Each feature belongs to the host's account, so when a client, a hiring manager at another company or the candidate sends the link, your tool may not run at all.

Can the AI summary end up in the candidate's inbox?

Yes, on all three, and this is the risk most teams miss. An interview summary can contain the interviewer's impressions, pay discussions and comparisons with other candidates.

• Zoom. The "Automatically share summary with" setting has four options, from "Only meeting host" to "All meeting invitees including those outside of our organization." A candidate on the invite who is signed in to Zoom would get the summary under the widest option. Admins can tick "Restrict users from sharing summaries" to block external sharing.
• Teams. The candidate cannot open the Recap tab, because only invited people in your organization can. But Microsoft's help article says users can "share AI summaries from intelligent recap with participants, including those outside your org" by email. That is blocked only by certain sensitivity labels or when recording and transcript access is limited to organizers or specific people.
• Gemini. The "Send notes to" menu offers "All invited guests, including those outside of my organization," "Invited guests in my organization" and "Hosts and co-hosts only." Google's admin page gives the internal option as the default; hosts can change it unless an admin stops them.

For interviews, set sharing to the host or hosts and co-hosts only, at the admin level, for the recruiting group. Then nobody has to remember on the day.

What does the candidate see, and can they say no?

By default, each platform shows a notice rather than asking. All three now offer a stronger option for admins:

• Zoom can show a custom message when AI is turned on, and non-host participants "join meetings with their camera and microphone disabled until they accept the custom AI notice." Admins choose whether it shows to internal participants, external participants or both.
• Teams has a "Require participant agreement for recording and transcription" policy, off by default. When on, participants are muted with cameras off once transcription starts, and anyone who answers "No" gets a view-only experience. Each person's choice goes into the attendance report and the audit log.
• Google Meet lets admins require explicit consent for recording, transcription and Take notes with Gemini. Google's April 2026 announcement says it is off by default; it works for web and mobile participants, while dial-in and Meet hardware users are consented automatically.

How these compare with the consent flows in ATS notetakers is in interview recording consent features compared. A platform prompt is a notice mechanism, not legal advice about whose consent you need. Tell the candidate in the invite and again at the start of the call; our interview recording consent script has wording. Recording rules vary by state and country.

Which works for phone screens?

Zoom and Teams each have a phone-side feature, sold with their phone systems. Zoom's "Call summary with AI" needs a Zoom Workplace license that includes Phone, or a Zoom Phone calling plan. Teams Premium includes "AI generated notes and recommended tasks (VoIP + PSTN)," and Microsoft's admin article says phone-number calls also need a Teams Phone license, a calling plan and call transcription turned on. Gemini's notes cover Meet meetings and in-person conversations, not phone calls. If your recruiters screen from personal mobiles, none of the three helps; see how to record a phone screen.

Is there any reason to use a separate AI note taker instead?

Yes, in five situations. If none applies to you, the built-in feature you already pay for is enough.

1. Someone else hosts. Agency recruiters on client links and interviewers on candidate-sent links cannot rely on the host's settings.
2. Mixed platforms. Interviews spread across Zoom, Teams and Meet need three setups and three retention policies.
3. You need a scorecard, not a summary. None of the three builds questions from the job description or fills ratings against criteria; see why meeting summaries don't work as interview scorecards.
4. You need the candidate's own words. Gemini's notes and Zoom's summary are paraphrase; quotable evidence needs a transcript.
5. Agency output. A client submittal in your template is not something a meeting summary produces.

We make Interview Signal, one option for those cases: a desktop app with no bot that works beside Zoom, Teams and Meet and on phone screens taken through the computer, and writes a scorecard with the candidate's quotes checked against the transcript. It has no ATS integration and is desktop only. Everything about Zoom, Microsoft and Google on this page comes from their own sites, linked and dated. Other bot-free options are compared in AI note takers without a bot.

What should you change before the first interview?

• Zoom: share summaries with the host only; tick "Restrict users from sharing summaries"; set "Auto-delete meeting summaries" to your retention period; consider the custom AI notice for external participants.
• Teams: set the recording expiration to match your interview retention; turn on the participant agreement policy for recruiters; ask IT whether a sensitivity label can block emailing recaps outside the organization.
• Google Meet: default notes sharing to hosts and co-hosts for the recruiting group and stop hosts widening it; turn on explicit consent; set a Vault retention rule for Meet files.