The 3 Best AI Tools To Take Meeting Minutes

Leveraging AI tools for meeting minutes is a top strategy for modern club administration, significantly streamlining the process of recording discussions. Powerful AI note-takers like Gemini for Meet, Otter.ai, and Fathom can automatically generate accurate summaries and full transcriptions for all your online meetings. By using this advanced meeting minutes software, your organisation can ensure a comprehensive record of every discussion, saving valuable time and improving overall efficiency.

Just over six months ago, I wrote an article all about the best AI tools for taking meeting minutes. Given the genuinely astonishing rate at which AI is advancing, it’s already out of date.

That means it’s time to revisit the topic to ensure you have the most up-to-date information possible. Today, let’s explore the top three AI-powered programs you can use to make taking meeting minutes for your club or association easier and more efficient. As AI is primarily an online tool, we'll be focusing on tools for online meetings.

In this article, we will cover: 

• Meeting notes with Google Gemini
• Meeting notes with Otter.ai 
• Meeting notes with Fathom 
• In-person meeting notes with NotebookLM
• General AI meeting minute tips

1. Using Gemini In Google Meet For Easy Meeting Minutes And Transcripts

Using Gemini within Google Meet is the method I personally use to take meeting minutes for all the online meetings I attend at work. Anytime I’m in a meeting with someone, whether it’s planning an article, organising priorities or interviewing a customer, I use Gemini to take notes for me.  

Gemini is Google’s answer to ChatGPT, and it's a very good one at that. When a part of Google’s "Google Workspace" package, you can use Gemini integrated into a wide range of applications, including Google Meet. When you join a meeting via Google Meet, you will see a small pen icon in the top right corner of the screen. Once you've set all your options, simply click "Start Taking Notes."

After your meeting, you and the guests you've selected will be emailed a copy of the meeting notes. These notes will be a Google Doc titled 'Meeting Notes' with a list of all guests. They will also contain a link to the transcript if you selected that option. The notes will be broken up into:

• A summary of the discussion.
• Dot-point details on what was discussed.
• What Gemini believes are the next steps.
• A copy of the transcript, the recording and any slides shared 

The notes also include time-code links to the transcript so you can check exactly what was said in the parts it is summarising. 
 

These detailed notes, coupled with the attached transcript, and automatically generated tasks, make it much easier to determine what was discussed in a meeting and create official meeting minutes.

I also really like that it doesn’t require a separate notetaker for the meeting. Some software will add an extra guest to the meeting, usually called something like "Piper’s Notetaker." That's fine, but having an extra, visibly-in-attendance guest can feel a little intrusive.

In this section, I have discussed Google Meet and Gemini, as these are the systems I use; however, Microsoft Copilot also performs a similar function in Microsoft Teams. I cannot personally attest to how well that works, but I’m sure it is comparable. Price-wise, using Gemini and Google Meet in this way means you need at least a Standard Google Workspace plan, which costs $19 per month. Using Microsoft Copilot in Teams requires at least a Microsoft 365 Copilot subscription, which costs $30 a month, plus you also need a Microsoft 365 Personal subscription for $16 a month. 

2. Use Otter.ai To Record Meeting Minutes 

Otter.ai is a program that can record meeting transcripts and generate AI-powered meeting minutes for any online meeting. It offers both free and paid versions, with the paid tiers ranging from $0 to $20 USD per month.

I’ve used Otter.ai, and it is really good; it's been designed specifically for taking meeting notes during online meetings. It can be linked to Google Meet, Zoom, Microsoft Teams and most other popular online meeting systems.  It too can share the notes with whichever guests you choose, and the formatting of the notes is excellent, even if the notes themselves are a little behind Gemini’s.

I really like that it automatically takes and attaches screenshots of things shared in the meeting. So, if someone shares an image or a website, it will be included in your meeting notes, with time codes for reference.

The ability for it to create "next steps" from your meeting minutes is also brilliant. You can edit and add to these next steps, then assign them directly to your team. This is an excellent feature if you don’t already have something like that in place; it allows you and your admin team to manage tasks directly from the Otter.ai dashboard.
 

 

Otter.ai is great and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it, especially if the extra task setting and organisational features are something you don’t already have. 

3. Using Fathom To Take Meeting Minutes For Your Club

Now, let's talk about Fathom, a free or paid AI note-taker with a depth of features that certainly lives up to its name. Fathom offers a free and a paid version, with pricing ranging from $0 to $19 USD per month. I'll be the first to admit that I have a bit of a soft spot for Fathom, because while it does add a notetaker as a guest to your meeting, the paid version allows you to name that notetaker anything you want.

So, when testing it out, I named mine Tony Hawk; everyone at Member Jungle was quite surprised to see Birdman join our meeting.

 

 

Fathom can record, transcribe, and take meeting minutes automatically, which can be sent to you and all of your meeting attendees after the meeting. There are also several templates for the notes that Fathom sends post-meetings, from the standard meeting minute format, to Q&A, to candidate interviews and much more. 

Fathom also has several more advanced features in its paid version, including naming your notetaker bot, integration with a bunch of popular tools, and automatically recording all of your team's meetings even if you're not in them, which feels a little dystopian surveillance state to me. Still, I'm sure it would have its uses. 

 

 

Choosing what meetings Fathom auto-records and who it sends the recording and meeting notes to is super helpful. The multiple meeting note formats make it a highly adaptable tool. I think the layout of meeting minutes and how they are organised is second to none. However, its transcriptions are probably not the best. 

NotebookLM For Meeting Minutes & Transcripts From In-Person Meetings

A quick mention for the best solution I have found for using AI to make meeting minutes from in-person interviews. NotebookLM is an AI-powered research assistant that can do a whole lot to help membership organisations. However, one of my most common uses of it is to make transcripts and meeting notes from in-person interviews and meetings. 

This is because NotebookLM allows you to upload various sources of information, including video and audio files. So if I am having a meeting in person in the office, I will just record the audio on my phone, then upload the file to NotebookLM and ask it to make a transcript and meeting notes for me. 

As far as the transcription, meeting minutes, and formatting go, NotebookLM isn’t as good as the rest. But you have to remember, it’s doing it from an audio-only recording of an in-person meeting, so it was a much harder job for sure.

Using NotebookLM for in-person meeting minutes, which, as a side note, isn’t even its main purpose, feels like a pretty good stopgap solution while we wait for a better option to come along.

Which AI Meeting Minutes Tool Is The Best Option For You?

Honestly, all the options we have talked about here today have their pros and cons. Using Google Meet and Gemini is best for accurate transcriptions. Otter.ai has the best formatting, and Fathom has the best meeting minutes. NotebookLM is Best for in-person meetings. 

I’ve used all of these, and honestly, they are all excellent. You won’t go wrong with any of them, but here are my recommendations:  

• If you already use Google Meet, upgrade your Google Workspace subscription and start using Gemini to take notes.  
• If you don’t have some software that allows you to track priorities and ongoing tasks for administrators, use Otter.ai.  
• If you have a system that already tracks tasks and priorities for you, and you use Microsoft Teams, Zoom or any other meeting software that isn’t Google Meet, use Fathom. 

Whichever you pick, you'll be fine; they are all good options.

AI Meeting Minute Tips 

Finally, let’s go over some general tips to get the most out of AI meeting tools. 

First, most of these tools will give you the option to record a transcript; always do so. AI summaries are great, but they aren’t perfect, so having a transcript to fall back on to double-check what was actually said is really important.

Second, if your meeting is really important, record the video and/or audio too. As good as auto-transcription features are these days, they do still occasionally drop a clanger, so you need to have the recording to refer back to and fix any issues in the auto-transcript.

Third, some AI note-takers will add a visible "guest" to your meetings. This is just the AI, not an actual person being added to your meeting, but it can be a little odd or disturbing to suddenly have this extra blank profile appear. So if your AI tool does this, make sure you let people know what it is and why it's there to help put people at ease.
 

 

Finally, the laws vary from state to state, but generally speaking, in Australia, it is illegal to record audio of someone without their knowledge and consent. 

The best practice is to ask for permission to record, turn on the recorder, and then ask again to ensure you have their positive consent on tape. Beyond any legal stuff, it’s just good manners to get people’s consent before recording them.

How Else Can You Improve Your Organisation With AI? 

So those are a few great AI tools you can use to make taking meeting minutes easier for you. 

For more ways to use AI to help you, have a look at How You Can Use AI To Help Your Club Or Association In 2025.

For a detailed breakdown of how to use AI to make more engaging content for your website, check out How To Use AI To Generate Content For Your Club’s Website.