Your Meetings Need an AI Makeover
An overview and how-to guide for AI’s killer workplace application
As a frequent user of AI in the workplace (primarily Microsoft Copilot), I use AI daily to enhance my writing, perform content searches, conduct research, and boost my productivity in Office apps like Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint. If I’m being honest though, I’m still trying to figure out the best ways to incorporate AI into my work routines. It’s a work in progress.
One application stands out though and has proven indispensable – an area that I’ve applied AI extensively and rely on it throughout the workday - using AI to facilitate meetings.
Meeting facilitation through AI is, in my opinion, the most powerful workplace application for most users. If your organization isn't leveraging AI in this way, you're already behind. It’s a game-changer.
This guide explores what AI can do for you during meetings, popular tools available, and how to start using them with your laptop or phone if you haven’t already. Let's dive in.
AI: Your New Meeting Sidekick
Before AI showed up, workplace collaboration tools like Microsoft Teams, Google Workplace, and Zoom offered basic transcription and recording features:
Transcription: converting spoken dialogue into written text that produces a detailed text document that captures what was said and can be reviewed or distributed later.
Recording: Capturing audio or video of a meeting for replay and reference.
While useful, the impact was limited. Sure, it produced a recording and searchable transcript, which were nice artifacts to refer back to, especially for someone who missed the meeting and was committed enough to take the time to review it.
But recordings mostly went unwatched, and transcripts, though searchable, were rarely used by meeting participants. Who has time to go back and rewatch something – more meetings await.
Enter AI
AI’s LLM capabilities are a natural fit for meetings, which generate lots of dialogue text that AI can summarize and generate into new and useful content. When it comes to meetings, AI can:
Auto-generate meeting summaries: Concisely recap key points, decisions, and action items without the need for a dedicated note taker – just turn on recording!
Action item tracking: Mentioned above but worth calling out – AI will identify tasks and assign owners automatically during or after the meeting. And it works.
Real-time AI query: Missed a portion of a meeting (tsk tsk multitaskers)? Open a private chat with AI and ask what your boss was just talking about, or what you missed when you refilled your coffee. A private AI companion right there that helps you understand and recap meeting content in real time.
Real-time transcription and captions: Provide live captions or post-meeting transcripts for clarity, accessibility, and reference.
@ Mentions – AI will tell you when your name was mentioned with context and with a click of a button, take you to the recording spot if you want to listen to it.
Contextual follow-ups: Suggest relevant documents, emails, or next steps based on what was discussed. Especially useful depending on what productivity suite you use – Microsoft Copilot is going to be best if you use Office, Gemini if you use Google Workplace, etc.
Language support: AI is an excellent language translator and can translate speech in real time and provide multilingual captions for diverse teams.
Suddenly, with the incorporation of AI, meetings and their summaries just got a whole lot more useful. With AI, there is no reason for a dedicated note taker. After the meeting you get a nice recap and recording of who spoke and when with summarization, action items, etc.
Workplace offerings: Battle of the AI Titans
Most productivity suites now include AI-powered meeting facilitation tools. Popular options include:
Microsoft Teams: Integrated with Microsoft Copilot, offering auto-generated summaries, task tracking, and contextual suggestions.
Google Workspace: Equipped with Gemini for AI-driven meeting insights and follow-ups.
Zoom: Incorporates AI to provide detailed transcripts, summaries, and action items.
The competition to offer these capabilities is fierce. If your platform doesn't support AI-powered meetings, it's time to upgrade.
Meeting Tools for Individuals and Small Teams
While I typically prefer using the above workplace products or AI Services like ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini, dedicated transcription tools are plentiful. If you’re interested, you can check out articles like this that review top offerings. Typically, you just download or sign up for an account and use their software to record and transcribe meetings, similar to offerings above.
There are also devices available to consider that specialize in this as well. One that I have personal experience with is Paude, which is a handy device you can attach to a phone and record meetings and conferences with (for an additional service fee).
Most of these are “freemium” models that you can try out on a limited basis but most will charge to use heavily. In that case, you might just stick with one of the larger technology offerings listed above like Google (more value overall typically) or doing it on your own below. (One tool that caught my eye though was Gladia, which offers up to 10hrs free transcription a month, which seems generous to me.)
There are also free but more technically adept solutions like Whisper by OpenAI, which can be used for free on a phone or PC. I wouldn’t recommend going this route though unless you’re willing to roll up your sleeves and get technical (which AI can help you with, if interested).
Using your AI Service: DIY Hacks
You can also keep it simple and just use your standard AI Service. That’s what I do outside of work. AI chat services are so versatile they can handle just about anything you throw at them, all it takes is a little prompting and know-how.
The tools listed above basically help you generate a transcript and then provide structured (invisible to the end-user) prompts that generate automatic meeting outputs. Our goal is to replicate this on our own using our existing AI service. With that in mind the steps are:
Generate a transcript of whatever you want AI help with.
Create a new chat and prompt it appropriately.
Feed that transcript into an AI chat.
Watch as the AI magic happens
Step 1: Generating a transcript
Phone: Probably the easiest way to generate a transcript is just to use your phone.
For iPhone users like me this couldn’t be easier. Just head to your native Voice Memos app and record (no limit!). Once it’s recorded, hit the ellipsis to the right and select “Copy transcript.” From there just paste it into your GPT/Gemini chat using your phone app. Voila!
I’m less familiar with Android but it looks pretty simple as well - check out this article for more detail: 5 Ways to Convert Voice Recordings to Text on Android - Guiding Tech.
PC: You can also use your laptop – here is a quick rundown of options from Microsoft. There are plenty of free 3rd party apps that you can find in the Windows store as well, as a quick search below shows.
Step 2: Priming a meeting chat
Once you have your transcript you just need to prompt AI for the output summary. Create a new chat and tell your AI Assistant that you’re going to feed it a transcript. Provide it with an outline of your desired output so that it has the necessary structure to be useful.
For instance, a general-purpose meeting output that provides a clear summary and action items (like how Microsoft Teams and others provide by default) is below. I actually got this directly from Claude, and while it’s probably overkill, I did try it, and it worked will.
📝 Example Prompt: Your task is to review the provided meeting notes and create a concise summary that captures the essential information, focusing on key takeaways and action items assigned to specific individuals or departments during the meeting. Use clear and professional language and organize the summary in a logical manner using appropriate formatting such as headings, subheadings, and bullet points. Ensure that the summary is easy to understand and provides a comprehensive but succinct overview of the meeting's content, with a particular focus on clearly indicating who is responsible for each action item. Create a final separate section that lists out in bullets form all action items and who is responsible for each one.
I went ahead and asked ChatGPT for some more ideas and structured approaches and thought the output was great and worth sharing.
General Purpose Meeting 📝 “Summarize the key points of this meeting, including decisions made, action items, deadlines, and assigned owners. Provide a clear, concise summary suitable for email follow-up.”
Nonprofit Meeting 📝 “Generate formal meeting minutes from this board meeting, including attendance, agenda items discussed, decisions made, votes recorded, and action items assigned for official records.”
Sales Call Recaps 📝 “Create a sales call summary highlighting client needs, pain points, proposed solutions, next steps, and follow-up tasks. Include timestamps for critical points.”
Legal Depositions 📝 “Provide a verbatim transcript of this legal deposition with clear timestamps. Highlight any points where clarification was requested or objections were raised.”
Customer Support Reviews 📝 “Analyze this support call and provide a summary of the customer's issues, steps taken to resolve them, and any unresolved concerns that require follow-up.”
Project Management Meetings 📝 “Summarize this project status meeting, noting progress updates, identified blockers, task assignments, deadlines, and any decisions made for the next phase.”
Academic Lectures or Seminars 📝 “Generate a detailed transcript of this lecture, highlighting key concepts, definitions, and important points. Summarize the main topics covered for quick review.”
Executive Briefings 📝 “Provide a concise summary of this executive briefing, including strategic decisions, objectives set, critical insights discussed, and next steps for leadership review.”
Training Sessions 📝 “Create a structured summary of this training session, highlighting key learning points, participant questions, clarifications provided, and areas identified for further training.”
Brainstorming Sessions 📝 “Organize this brainstorming session into structured notes, categorizing ideas by themes, highlighting actionable items, and suggesting potential next steps.”
These all look very useful to me!
Just use these prompts first, see if AI has any follow-up questions, then upload your transcript for an output summary.
Before You Hit Record: What You Need to Know
Always obtain consent from all participants before recording meetings or conversations. Recording without proper consent may violate local, state, or federal laws. Ensure compliance with applicable regulations and organizational policies before using recording tools. This is important!
The Future of Meetings Is Here—Are You In?
While there are great paid subscription options out there like Microsoft Copilot and Google Workplace, with a little know-how and effort, you can produce fantastic summary outputs for your meetings and recordings use your reliable AI assistant. If you haven’t used AI in this way, I highly encourage you to try.
Very helpful Adam! You always present excellent options for putting AI to use, in this case meetings. I plan on trying some of your ideas to help both meeting and post-meeting productivity.