How To Use AI To Take Meeting Notes: A Guide To AI Tools

Even the most competent note-takers can miss information during a meeting, and jotting everything down limits their ability to fully engage in the conversation.

One fewer person is one fewer perspective, and the hours lost by employees in meetings can cost you a lot of money. Plus, the back-and-forth note exchange after the call gets frustrating and confusing. Instead, learn to use AI to take meeting notes and enjoy more productive, cost-effective sessions.

Why use AI tools for organization-wide meeting notes?

Employee satisfaction directly impacts performance and profits. And for years, many workers have seen meetings as an unpleasant experience—or even worse, a waste of time.

But meetings don’t deserve a bad rap. Creating a suitable virtual meeting environment and providing the right tools allows you to focus on a quality over quantity work culture and get more done during your weekly calls.

AI solutions like Fellow take the meeting stressors out of the picture, offering features like: 

• AI Meeting Copilot: Fellow’s Meeting Copilot is your personal meeting assistant, relieving note-takers of their duties so they can focus on what’s really important—offering input. The Copilot records, transcribes, and summarizes calls, delivering detailed notes in a centralized location. Plus, the “Ask Copilot” feature lets you ask things like “What should I follow up on in the next meeting?” and “What did I miss?”
• Action items: Alongside recordings and transcriptions, the Meeting Copilot automatically creates action items highlighting key points and decisions. And Fellow integrates with all your notes and calendars, including Google Meet, Zoom, and Microsoft Teams. So if you miss a meeting, you can access action item lists later to identify your responsibilities.
• Auto-generated meeting agenda: Fellow’s Copilot takes cues from action items, previous talking points, meeting titles, and participants to create a relevant agenda for your next call. 
• Suggested topics: Fellow works great for one-on-one meetings, too. A database of one-on-one topics based on previous calls and talking points keeps the conversation productive and engaging (you’ll find this on the right side of your Fellow app).

How to use AI-powered tools to take meeting notes

While it only takes a couple of clicks to use Fellow to record meetings and transcribe conversations, following these tips helps you make the most of its AI features.

​​Accurately capture complex discussions

Fellow excels at transcribing complex discussions with jargon and nuanced dialogue. But it’s still wise to ask attendees to speak slowly and clearly and avoid talking over each other to improve note accuracy.

It’s also important to put names next to speakers in your AI-generated notes—this way, you know who said what and can credit individuals for their contributions. You can add names yourself or have the AI note-taker track speakers, adding names to its notes.

Align employees on key takeaways and avoid subjectivity

Since Fellow generates your meeting notes, you reduce the risk of subjective interpretations and miscommunication. But the organizer or moderator should still review notes immediately after the call to remove errors and confusing sentences. 

You can do more than edit notes post-call—collaborative features like real-time commenting allow employees to provide context and clarification to help everyone better understand each session’s takeaways. Plus, Fellow offers a recording library and the ability to cut “clips” from recordings so you can save and share accurate records.

Create an automated record of meeting notes

AI tools make it easy to automate note-taking so you don’t have to write or type each point by hand. And Fellow easily integrates with all your video conferencing and communication platforms. Use Fellow’s templates to track meeting minutes and enjoy having a centralized bank of automated meeting records. 

This single-source-of-truth approach cuts down on admin work and encourages alignment across the organization. And with everything in the cloud, you’ll never lose your notes again.

Use insights to make meetings more productive

Fellow does more than note-taking—it can analyze your calendars, schedules, and interactions to offer insights about meeting habits and where you spend your time. It even tracks things like talk time and active participation levels.

Things to consider when using an AI meeting note-taker

While AI-powered tools are great for note-taking, knowing their limitations means you can make smarter, more ethical choices when using them. Here are a few things to consider.

1Lack of context

Even the best AI meeting note-takers might not understand the full context of discussions, which could lead to incomplete and misinterpreted transcripts. They mainly focus on transcribing verbal communication, overlooking non-verbal cues like tone and body language.

For example, an AI tool might take a statement like “Let’s put a pin in it” literally (putting a pin in something) instead of figuratively (dealing with the issue at a different time). When looking back at your notes, you might find improperly translated statements or not find the pinned issue since the tool didn’t understand its relevance.

2Capturing multiple speakers

An AI notetaker might struggle to match voices with the right names in meetings with multiple speakers and overlapping conversations. The tool might credit the wrong person or produce broken text, making the notes less accurate.

3Audio quality

Poor audio quality (often caused by background noise or technical issues) makes it difficult for AI tools to accurately capture words. Muffled voices, traffic noises, and static—like from remote workers with choppy WiFi—can lead the AI to omit important details you can’t recall later. And calls might automatically disconnect, resulting in delays and gaps in notes.

4Confidentiality

AI-generated meeting notes may have sensitive information—anything from client deals and mergers to employee performance and financials. As a senior leader exchanging confidential details, make sure transcriptions don’t fall into the wrong hands.

Introduce Fellow’s AI Copilot to the team

AI tools may have some drawbacks, but the pros outweigh the cons when you use Fellow. With features like AI meeting summaries, auto-recording, and Meeting Guidelines, we’ve taken big steps to reduce limitations so you can have more productive sessions.

Whether you’re looking for AI meeting summaries or analytics to see employee productivity patterns, Fellow has you covered.