Using AI for Meeting Notes and Summaries (So You Can Actually Pay Attention)

I used to spend meetings doing two things badly instead of one thing well. Half-listening while half-typing notes that were half-useful. Then I'd spend twenty minutes after the meeting trying to decipher what "check w/ James re: thing from last time???" meant.

AI meeting tools fixed this. Not perfectly. But well enough that i now actually listen in meetings and the notes are better than anything i ever produced manually.

Here's what works, what doesn't, and how to start.

What these tools actually do

AI meeting tools generally do three things:

1. Transcribe. They turn spoken words into text, in real-time or from a recording.
2. Summarise. They condense a 45-minute meeting into a structured summary with key points.
3. Extract action items. They identify who agreed to do what and by when.

Some also integrate with your calendar, project management tools, and CRM. Some generate shareable notes automatically. Some do speaker identification so you know who said what.

The best ones feel like having a very attentive, slightly robotic personal assistant in every meeting.

The tools I've actually used

Granola

This is what I use most. It runs locally on your machine, listens to your meeting audio, and generates notes afterwards. The key difference: it doesn't announce itself. No bot joins your call. Nobody sees a recording notification. For meetings where that matters (and it often does), this is significant.

You can also type rough notes during the meeting and Granola enhances them with context from the audio. So you jot "Sarah mentioned Q3 budget concerns" and Granola fills in the specifics.

Best for: People who want meeting notes without the social weirdness of a recording bot. Cost: Free tier available, paid plan around £10/month.

Otter.ai

The most established player. Otter joins your meetings (Zoom, Teams, Google Meet) as a participant, transcribes everything, and generates summaries. It's been around longest and has the most integrations.

The downside: everyone in the meeting sees "Otter.ai" join as a participant. Some people find this off-putting. Some organisations have policies against it. Check before you use it.

Best for: Teams who are all comfortable with AI transcription. Cost: Free tier with limited minutes, paid from £13/month.

Fireflies.ai

Similar to Otter but with stronger CRM integration. If you're in sales and need meeting notes to flow into Salesforce or HubSpot, Fireflies does this well. Also has a good search feature for finding specific topics across all your past meetings.

Best for: Sales teams and anyone who needs meeting data in their CRM. Cost: Free tier available, paid from £14/month.

Microsoft Teams built-in transcription

If you're on Teams, you already have this. Turn on transcription (or Copilot if your organisation pays for it) and Teams will transcribe and summarise meetings natively. It's not as polished as dedicated tools, but it's already there and your IT department has already approved it.

Best for: Anyone in a Microsoft-first organisation. Cost: Included with Teams, better features with Copilot licence.

Google Meet transcription

Google Meet now does transcription and note-taking natively for Workspace users. Similar to Teams: not the best, but it's built in and approved.

Best for: Google Workspace organisations.

How to get the best results

Audio quality matters more than anything. AI transcription is only as good as the audio. Use a decent microphone. If you're in a meeting room, use the room's mic system, not your laptop mic from across the table. Encourage video-call participants to use headsets.

Speak clearly and use names. "Sarah, what do you think about the Q3 timeline?" gives the AI a speaker tag. "What do you reckon?" does not.

Review and edit the notes. Always. AI transcription is not perfect. It mishears things. It misattributes speakers. It sometimes turns "we should definitely NOT do that" into "we should definitely do that" which is, you know, a problem. Spend five minutes reviewing the summary before you share it.

Set up a template. Most tools let you configure what the summary looks like. Set it up once with sections like: key decisions, action items (with owners and deadlines), topics discussed, follow-ups. Then every meeting produces notes in a consistent format.

The privacy question

This is important and people don't think about it enough.

Meeting recordings contain conversations. Sometimes sensitive conversations. Before you use any of these tools, consider:

• Does your company allow meeting recording?
• Do all participants consent? (In some jurisdictions, recording without consent is illegal.)
• Where does the audio/transcript get stored?
• Who has access to it?
• Is confidential information being processed by a third-party service?

For many organisations, the safety considerations are the same as for any AI tool at work. Check your policy. Get approval if needed. Don't record things you shouldn't record.

A good rule of thumb: if you wouldn't want the transcript forwarded to everyone in the company, maybe don't record it.

The "but nobody will speak freely" problem

This is the most common objection I hear. "If everything's being recorded, people won't be honest."

It's a fair point. And it's sometimes true. There are meetings where transcription is inappropriate: difficult HR conversations, sensitive personnel discussions, brainstorming sessions where people need to say half-formed thoughts without them being immortalised.

The solution isn't to avoid transcription entirely. It's to use it selectively. Status updates, project reviews, client calls (with consent), planning sessions... these are great candidates. Sensitive one-to-ones and difficult conversations are not.

For more on what AI tools are available for office work, including meeting tools, we have a full rundown.

The one thing to do today: try the meeting tool that's already available to you. If you're on Teams, turn on transcription for your next meeting. If you're on Google Meet, enable the notes feature. If you use Zoom, try the built-in AI companion. You don't need to install anything new. Just tick a box and see what happens.