Can We Talk About AI Notetaker Bots for a Moment?

It’s starting to happen more often that people are sending their AI notetaker bots to video meetings, but then don’t show up in person.

AI notetakers can be useful to, well, take notes. But they cannot replace you in the meeting.

Here are a few things to keep in mind:

When it’s just myself and several AI bots, there is no meeting…

… and there will be no notes to take 🙂

If the meeting was a one-way presentation or information session, I would have sent a video or an email. I only arrange for meetings when I need your participation, feedback, questions, my questions answered, and similar.

Meetings are also important to nurture our social relationship, mutual respect, shared enthusiasm and accountability – all parts of the social glue that keeps us all wanting to show up for work and do our best for each other.

Teamwork requires the team: we need you here

In a group setting, it may seem really valuable and convenient to send an AI bot on your behalf so you can do something else and still catch up with what the rest of the group decided.

But teamwork requires participation of all team members. Be part of the feedback round, be part of the decision-making.

It is also an efficiency question: ask and answer questions today rather than after the fact. We all know the meme “this meeting could have been an email”, but the reverse is also often true: “this 38-reply, 3-week long email chain could have been a 10-minute meeting”.

AI bots are here to assist you, not replace you.

Confidentiality and consent

Confidentiality matters. Some of our clients, especially in the health and wellness space, have strict privacy requirements.

Some meetings include sensitive information, and not every team is comfortable with third-party bots recording the discussion.

Inaccuracies and the fallout

I have also noticed that the AI summaries are not always accurate to what was actually being accomplished, discussed and decided. For example, a human participant might say there’s something we still need to look at, and the AI notetaker might summarize that it has already been handled simply because it came up in conversation.

This also leads to more admin work and email communication later to resolve the resulting confusion.

I typically send a hand-written email summary of the meeting to everybody afterwards anyway – so that we all have access to the same information, for posterity and for liability reasons. I want us all to be on the same page.

Short-term relief, long-term risk

This is one of those cases where in the moment it feels like AI helpers are saving you time and money, all the while creating longer-term issues that often turn into a worse time and money sink down the road.

There’s no replacement for human connection

I want our meetings to be the place where we get things done smoothly and efficiently, not where we create more work for future-us. Everybody’s time and budgets are limited and precious, and our team always works with our clients’ resources in mind.

AI helpers can help, but they cannot replace YOU. 🙂