Let an AI guardian screen new group members
What it is
Since June 2026 you can make an AI bot an admin of your group and hand it the join requests. For each applicant, the guardian lets them in, turns them down, or leaves the decision to the human admins. Before deciding, it can open a Mini App for the person, say a short quiz. If you want, it can also deal with rule-breakers inside the chat.
How to do it
- Pick a bot built for this: only bots that support join request queries can be assigned to process them.
- Add it as an admin. iOS: Group Info (tap the photo at the top right) › Edit ›… Add it as an admin. iOS: Group Info (tap the photo at the top right) › Edit › Administrators. Android: Group Info (tap the name) › pencil icon › Administrators. Desktop: … › Manage group › Administrators.
- Give it the right to invite users: the Bot API requires it for approving and declining requests.
- Let people in by join request, for example with an invite link that needs admin approval.
- Check the requests it leaves to you: those wait for a human admin.
Watch out
- For developers: the bot must approve, decline or queue each request, or open its Mini App, within 10 seconds.
- While a request is pending, the bot can message the applicant for 5 minutes, unless another admin already has.
- Delete and ban rights, if you add them, work across the whole chat, not just on newcomers.
With Gem
Gem isn't an AI guardian. Nearby, in /myprojects › Chats, it makes a join-request link and approves requests by your project's rules, for example after the person finishes the welcome, and by language; a request to the other language's chat is declined and the person gets their own.
Sources
- https://telegram.org/blog/watch-apps-and-more
- https://core.telegram.org/bots/api
- https://core.telegram.org/bots/api-changelog
- https://telegram.org/faq