AI notetaker

An AI notetaker is a tool using artificial intelligence to take notes during meetings.^[1] They are created by tech companies such as Microsoft and Google; by AI transcription services such as Fellow.ai, Otter.ai, Fireflies.ai, and MeetGeek; and by smaller firms such as Circleback, Fathom, Granola, and Krisp.^[2][1][3][4] Some business executives send AI notetakers to attend meetings not only to take notes, but also to answer questions on their behalf.^[3]

The use of AI notetakers raises ethical questions, including recording meetings without the consent of all participants and the possibility that the notetaker will hallucinate and misrepresent what was said during meetings.^[2] There are also concerns when it comes to the privacy and security of meeting data and the sensitive information that lives inside meetings.^[5]

AI notetakers can be categorized as bot-based or bot-free systems. Bot-based approaches involve deploying an AI agent into a virtual meeting as a participant, allowing it to access audio and video directly. Examples include some enterprise-grade tools for Zoom or Teams.^[6] Bot-free systems rely on passive capture methods, such as recording from a single user’s device or processing saved meeting files eliminating the need for the AI to join as a participant. In a bot-based approach, the bot joins the conversation like a participant, records everything, and creates transcriptions of the meeting.^[7]