Meetings are tricky, even in a world packed with amazing collaboration apps. Whenever I’m in a meeting, I’m constantly forced to multi-task. I need to pay attention to what the other person (or people) are saying, respond appropriately, and take notes.
It’s tough, particularly if, like me (and many others), you’re constantly distracted by your own video feed. Fortunately, an AI meeting assistant can help. They can record calls for you to check later, transcribe audio, summarize conversations, highlight action items, and more. Some even spruce up your meeting quality for you or translate conversations with live captions.
The question is, which AI meeting assistant is best?
I’ve tested some of the top options to bring you this comprehensive guide.
What is an AI Meeting Assistant?
An AI meeting assistant is a tool or program that uses artificial intelligence to enhance various aspects of online meetings. Basically, it’s an intelligent tool that takes a lot of extra work off your plate, like summarizing meetings and taking notes.
These tools have become extremely popular in the age of generative AI and conversational AI. They can use things like natural language processing to actually understand what’s going on in a meeting, pinpoint action items, and save teams a lot of time.
However, not all meeting assistants are the same. Some are essentially speech recognition and transcription tools that convert conversations into a readable format. Others can help schedule meetings for you at the right time, like Microsoft’s Copilot in Places or Zoom’s Scheduler.
Some assistants can surface valuable information during a conversation, assign action items, or translate conversations into other languages. There are even meeting assistants who can draw insights from conversations to help you plan better sessions in the future.
What to Look for in an AI Meeting Assistant
So, how do you define the best AI meeting assistant for your needs? Well, that all depends on what matters most to you regarding features, budget, and other factors. When I created the list below, these are the main areas I focused on:
- Simplicity: No one wants yet another meeting tool that’s difficult to use. The best assistants should easily connect to your existing tools (video conferencing software, calendars, and databases), and be simple to interact with, through natural language prompts.
- Exceptional AI: Why settle for anything less than the best generative AI functionality? Look for accurate transcription, fast-paced summarization, insights, sentiment analysis, and other handy tools to make your meetings easier.
- Time-saving features: Anything that saves you time in a meeting is worth having. A great meeting assistant can help create agendas, schedule meetings based on specific criteria, automatically transcribe and translate content, and more.
- Integrations: Great assistants need to work with the tools you already use. I already mentioned communication tools and calendars, but it makes sense to look for integrations with all the task, workplace management, and productivity tools you use.
- Security: Generative AI has its risks. When choosing AI meeting tools, make sure you maintain control over your data, have access to end-to-end encryption, and know how the system stores and uses information.
Do You Need an AI Meeting Assistant?
Before I dive into my list of the best AI assistants out there for collaboration, it’s worth noting you might not need one. If you’re already using a UCaaS or collaboration platform like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, or Google, for instance, you may already have AI baked in.
Zoom offers its AI companion on even the lowest-paid plans, giving you access to summaries, transcription, smart chapters, content generation, and more. Microsoft Teams offers access to Copilot, though you will need to pay an extra fee. The good news is that Copilot’s Microsoft 365 plan does give you an assistant across all of your productivity apps.
Google Meet is even adding Gemini functionality, which means you’ll have access to summarization, transcription, and translation features in your meetings. Again, however, there’s an extra fee to add this functionality to Google Workspace.
So, basically, you only really need an extra AI meeting assistant if you’re having meetings across multiple platforms and want to access insights and record data in the same place. You might also find a meeting assistant useful for accessing additional conversation analytics and tools, or if you don’t use any of the platforms above.
The Best AI Meeting Assistants for Teams
With all that out of the way, let’s dive into my list of the best AI meeting assistants around for businesses today.
1. Otter: Best for Meeting Insights
Pros:
- Excellent cross-channel functionality
- Useful meeting insights
- Transcription for audio and video
Cons:
- Slight issues understanding technical language
Otter is a handy AI meeting assistant I’ve used a few times with tools like Microsoft Teams and Webex. It’s essentially a real-time note-taking and transcription tool with a few bonus features. With Otter, you can transcribe meetings instantly, record audio and slide content, extract action items from conversations, and generate meeting summaries.
The app works with Microsoft Teams, Webex, and Zoom and can answer plenty of useful questions about your conversations. You ask the bot things like “Who mentioned me in this meeting?” or “What were the key takeaways from this meeting?”
There’s also a handy feature called “AI Channels,” which can combine live conversations with asynchronous discussions to give you a complete overview of project progress.
2. Fireflies.AI: Best Transcription Capabilities
Pros:
- Great generative AI features
- Custom speech models
- Excellent recording capabilities
Cons:
- Slightly cluttered user interface
Fireflies.ai is a brilliant tool for companies that spend a lot of time in important meetings. The app can transcribe everything that everyone says in a meeting, isolating specific speakers, dates, times, metrics mentioned, and more. It can also create lists of attendees, run sentiment analysis in real time, and track specific topics mentioned in conversations.
Plus, there’s even a free plan with unlimited transcription. The solution works with Zoom, Google Meet, Teams, and more. It offers real-time search within meetings, transcription for more than 69 languages, and even a handy mobile app.
One feature I particularly love is the ability to create “sound bites” within the app. This means you can share short snippets from each meeting with your team in an instant.
3. Avoma: Best AI Meeting Assistant for Analytics
Pros:
- Exceptional conversational intelligence
- Easy to use interface
- Tools for before, during, and after meetings.
Cons:
- Expensive pricing
Avoma is an app that works with various meeting platforms and tools, including Zoom, Microsoft Teams, BlueJeans, Lifesize, and more. What I really like about this app is that it supports you with all stages of the meeting process.
Before the meeting, it can help with scheduling and creating agenda templates. During a conversation it can automatically record and transcribe meetings, with live bookmarking. Plus, after the meeting, you can access a host of AI-generated notes, snippets, comments, playlists, and more.
Additionally, Avoma gives you in-depth insights into everything from engagement levels to common topics, talking-to-listening ratios, and revenue intelligence. It even has specific tools for sales teams to help them improve conversions.
4. Tl;dv: Best Search Functionality
Pros:
- Excellent free plan
- Integrations with a range of tools
- Tools for creating video clips
Cons:
- Slightly annoying setup
Tl;dv is a user-friendly AI meeting assistant offering a range of excellent features. Even on the free plan, you get unlimited AI meetings, viewers, and moment summaries. Plus, you can transcribe conversations in more than 30 languages, record videos, automatically recognize speakers, and create moment clips to share with teams.
The AI tool can collaborate with you in meetings, answering questions in chat mode, it can also create multi-meeting reports, which you can add notes to before sharing with your team. Plus, there are robust speaker insights covering everything from talking time to engagement.
On paid plans, you can integrate the system with more than 5,000 tools, create email follow-ups for team members and access AI coaching features.
5. Sembly: Best for Meeting Minutes
Pros:
- Excellent automatic summaries with meeting minutes
- Video and audio recording
- AI task assignment and automation
Cons:
- Limited free plan
The Sembly AI meeting assistant makes managing team conversations easy, with automatic AI meeting notes and transcriptions that include meeting minutes. It can add a chatbot to your meeting, answering questions throughout the conversation. Plus, you can link the tool with various apps and create robust automated workflows.
Sembly’s toolkit also includes access to workspace analytics, which provide useful insights into work and resource management. The solution can automate follow-ups with team members, recall previous meetings, and support translation into 32+ languages.
Plus, you maintain full control over customizing your meeting notes and recordings, so you can add elements before you share them with your team.
