Google Meet can now take notes so you don’t have to

You can stop asking the intern to take notes during meetings — Google Meet has it covered. 

The tech giant has launched a new feature in Google Meet called ‘Take notes for me‘ that takes advantage of AI transcription to summarize meetings automatically.

The tool was first announced earlier this year amid a host of other generative AI features for Google Workspace, including lighting, translation, and backgrounds, but unlike those the note-taking tool was listed as “coming soon”.

The company has now said the note-taking feature will begin rolling out to customers today.

Announcing the features earlier this year, Google said that ‘Take notes for me’ would “let you drop the pen and lean into the conversation instead of taking notes.”

The feature will analyze a call or meeting in real time, creating a list of key points.

Notably, Google said this will enable users joining a call late to quickly catch up, while at the end of a meeting a summary is automatically generated and distributed among attendees.

Google added that companies will be able to configure how the tool works and that such data — which could be sensitive — is saved locally.

“Notes documents will be stored in the meeting owner’s drive folder and will follow the Meet retention policy that your organization has configured,” the company said in a blog post.

Auto-generated meeting summaries aren’t new, but are increasingly common in video conferencing software thanks to generative AI. 

Transcription software Otter.ai added meeting summaries in 2022, for example, complete with the ability to link to calls in Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and even Google Meet for automated transcriptions and notes. Zoom now offers that feature natively via its AI Companion, as does Microsoft Teams when used with Copilot.

The move brings Google Meet up to speed with rival platforms, but also suggests independent software makers may again be cut out. Otter.AI and other third-party add-ons have offered this tool for years, but it’s increasingly being offered in-house following the shift to generative AI in productivity suites.

How to access the new Google Meet features

To access these and the other generative AI features announced in April, users will need to have a Gemini Enterprise or Gemini Education Premium account, or upgrade their Workspace plans with the new AI Meetings and Messaging add-on for $10 a month per user. 

To use the feature, admins need to configure Workspace by going to ‘Gemini Settings’ under ‘Google Meet’ in the Workspace admin console.

The admin setting will begin showing up from today, with rollout expected to finish by 21 August. It will be on by default.

Full end-user availability will be released soon, Google added.