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7 AI meeting assistants to consider in 2024
AI meeting assistants are packed with powerful features to improve employee productivity and meeting workflows. So, which AI tool is best for your organization?
For many business professionals, opening a weekly calendar app can be fraught with anxiety. Among their concerns: How do they find time for heads-down, productive work with so many meeting blocks? How can they keep track of post-meeting to-dos? What if they join a meeting late or not at all -- are they going to miss critical discussions and decisions?
As enterprises look to ease these concerns and address employee experience challenges, they may consider certain technology to improve meeting workflows and outcomes.
In Metrigy research on employee experience conducted in 2022, 55% of 250 companies studied globally had already identified in-meeting assistance for providing summaries and logging action items, notes and decisions to have the highest value among various types of AI-driven video meeting functions. Fast-forward to 2024, and creating meeting summaries has become generative AI's top use case for employee interactions, with 80% of nearly 700 companies studied globally already using or testing this type of meeting assistance, according to Metrigy's "AI for Business Success: 2024-25" study.
What to expect in an AI meeting assistant
AI meeting assistants serve many purposes before, during and after meetings. At a base level, using advanced functionality, such as machine learning and automation, AI meeting assistants offload tasks such as scheduling and rescheduling, meeting transcription and translation, notetaking, and creation of meeting recaps and summaries. Knowing AI has their backs, meeting participants can stay focused on the ongoing discussion or presentation and save time by not having to listen to meeting recordings for missed comments. As a result, meeting assistants can improve efficiency, boost productivity, and enable individuals and teams to reap more value from meetings, while, at the same time, making the meeting experience itself more enjoyable for all.
Naturally, beefing up AI meeting assistants has become a priority for meeting app providers, such as Cisco, Google, Microsoft and Zoom, as well as for standalone vendors vying for recognition. Many of these providers have tapped the power of generative AI to give their meeting assistants new and improved capabilities.
Beyond the basics, IT leaders should evaluate AI meeting assistants for their ability to support more advanced features and functionality, such as the following:
- In-progress meeting catch-up. The AI assistant provides an up-to-the-moment recap for participants who join after a meeting has started.
- Meeting stand-in. The AI assistant takes the place of a live meeting participant, sharing input and delivering a recap after the meeting ends.
- Email recaps. The AI assistant captures keywords and action items and then distributes a meeting recap to participants via email.
- Sentiment analysis. The AI assistant analyzes meeting transcripts for negative or otherwise troublesome sentiment and alerts managers, potentially with best-action recommendations.
- Post-meeting queries. The AI assistant provides answers to natural-language prompts, such as, "Give me the top three takeaways for my team."
How AI assistants can support greater collaboration
Facilitating and increasing collaboration among employees are other benefits of AI meeting assistants -- and here, too, they have a role to play at all stages of a meeting.
For example, teams can rely on autoscheduling capabilities to find the best times for maximum participation for both one-off and recurring meetings. And, with some of the features noted above, team members who can't attend a meeting can still have their voices heard. They can also get recaps of the decisions made and actions required so they don't feel left out on the team's progress.
During a meeting, AI assistants can help all participants, including non-native speakers, easily follow and contribute to the discussion by providing real-time translation and captions. They participate in the collaborative work, rather than just follow along.
In addition, an AI assistant can make suggestions on what else a team might want to collaborate on based on the historical understanding of team activities. This sort of prompt can help team members stay on track and meet project deadlines. Some AI assistants also facilitate collaboration via brainstorming modes, which is especially useful in meeting apps that support visual whiteboards.
After a meeting, an AI assistant can analyze meeting recordings for persistent topics and trends. Team managers can use these insights for strategic planning and even use the AI assistant to schedule a team meeting for additional collaboration.
Making an AI assistant part of business workflows
To achieve maximum benefit from their investment, IT leaders must encourage employees to consider how AI meeting assistants fit into daily workflows. This forethought can improve efficiency and productivity.
For example, an AI meeting assistant can collect action items that a product development manager then assigns and tracks within a project management application, keeping a project on schedule. Or a customer support representative can update a customer record with summaries auto generated by a meeting assistant, which can also create next steps and auto schedule a follow-up meeting.
Using one or more meeting assistants
Enterprise IT leaders should know the basic capabilities of AI meeting assistants. They need to shop around to get the features and functionalities that best meet their employees' needs and further reduce the stress associated with meeting tasks.
Toward this end, nearly 40% of 440 companies that participated in Metrigy's global "Workplace Collaboration 2023-24" research use more than one meeting app. And slightly more than 20% of these companies did so because their primary meeting app lacked features they needed.
While researching AI meeting assistants, TechTarget editors and Metrigy focused on unified communications meeting app providers and standalone vendors. Our research included market analysis of some of the leading options. This list is in alphabetical order.
1. Airgram
Airgram can summarize, translate and transcribe meetings. It features meeting autojoin to Google Meet, Microsoft Teams and Zoom. Airgram has a free version. The Plus plan is $18 per user, per month.
2. Cisco Webex Assistant
Cisco Webex Assistant is free with paid licenses. It features meeting catch-up, recap, summarization, transcription and translation. It can also compose, modify and summarize messages.
3. Copilot in Teams
Much like the other AI assistants, Copilot in Teams features meeting catch-up, recap, summarization, transcription, translation and sentiment analysis. It can also compose, modify and summarize messages. Copilot for Microsoft 365 is $30 per user, per month. The monthly cost per user for Copilot Pro is $20. A free version is also available.
4. Fireflies.ai
Fireflies.ai features meeting notes, summarization and transcription. It also auto syncs meeting notes, recordings and transcriptions with collaboration apps. Fireflies.ai has a free version and three paid plans: $10, $19 and $39 -- all per seat, per month.
5. Gemini for Google Workspace
Gemini for Google Workspace, previously known as Duet AI, offers meeting catch-up, recap, summarization, transcription, translation and sentiment analysis. It also features message summarization and modification and can help compose email, documents and messages. The monthly cost per user is $20 for the Business plan and $30 for the Enterprise license.
6. Otter.ai Meeting GenAI
Otter.ai Meeting GenAI features meeting summarization, transcription and chat queries. It can also help compose email and offers cross-platform support. The Pro version of Otter.ai is $10 per user, per month. The Business version is $20 per user, per month.
7. Zoom AI Companion
Zoom AI Companion features meeting catch-up, recap, summarization, transcription, translation and sentiment analysis. It can also modify and summarize messages and compose messages and email. Zoom AI Companion is free with paid licenses.
Clearly, these AI meeting assistants have similar capabilities and yet might present certain features differently. For instance, one assistant may handle meeting summarization differently than another assistant. Enterprises may simply opt for the Cisco or Microsoft assistants because those vendors are already deeply ingrained in the enterprises' meeting workflows.
In addition to this list, several other AI meeting assistants are available on the market. Businesses need to do their due diligence to research these powerful meeting tools to find the best fit for their employees and workflows.
Beth Schultz is vice president of research and principal analyst at Metrigy. She focuses her research on unified communications, collaboration and digital customer experience.
