Companies and workers are beginning to use AI to monitor meetings. Some people use bots to “attend” meetings in their place, having the AI record the meeting, summarize it, and analyze the proceedings to extract key points the person has asked for.

One man who sits on several boards of directors can be double-booked and will use a bot to attend one of the meetings for him, he told The Wall Street Journal. A summary of the meeting he missed arrives in his inbox within two hours.

When the man does attend a meeting himself, his overly diligent assistant records small talk, tells the man if he came late to the meeting, and counts the number of times he interrupts people who are speaking.

The man justified his interruptions by saying it’s important “to move things along.”

Other bots take a more active role. The WSJ told the story of a software developer who was making a presentation to a virtual meeting. After 30 minutes, the AI reminded him he’d been talking nonstop and suggested he let someone else take a turn.

The same bot urged him to vary the tone and pitch of his voice to make his presentation more interesting.

“It’s technology for corporate tax software,” the man grumbled to the WSJ. “No one’s going to carry me out of the room on their shoulders.”

Another user was told by his bot that he used the term “absolutely!” eight times in a half-hour call. He made a list of alternatives, such as “yes” or “certainly” or “100 percent” and now consults the list during calls. “I don’t want to sound robotic,” he told the WSJ.

Others have found the technology to be creepy, sometimes finding themselves as the only human on a Zoom screen full of squares occupied by bots.