May 10, 2024
One thing about having an office job (even if you work from home) is that no matter what the nature of your office job is, part of what you do is administrative work like answering emails and sending meeting requests. One such tedious task is going the way of the iPod—note-taking. The big video conferencing apps now either contain an AI-powered transcription tool, or you can purchase an add-on to enable the service.
There are also many free AI tools you can try out to see which is right for you including Otter, Fireflies and tl;dv, to name a few. Some can even be used for in-person meetings. What these tools can do for you will vary, but generally, here’s what they have to offer your next team meeting.
Real-time transcription
Tools can capture, with pretty good accuracy, word-for-word transcription of your meetings if you need a highly detailed record.
Speaker Identification
Some apps can differentiate between different speakers and can attribute who said what in their transcription.
Summarization
If you don’t need a verbatim transcript and instead just want high level notes, apps can boil the conversation down into digestible notes.
Collaboration
Many of the services allow you to easily share and edit transcripts so you and your team build directly upon the group discussion.
Increased Accessibility
Some services focus on providing real-time transcription for individuals with hearing impairments to make meetings more accessible.
With the explosion of AI, there’ll likely be more capability and new apps to test out since this article was published. Based on your budget, transcription and note-taking needs, you’ll be able to find the tool that’s right for you—and then it’ll write for you.