AI: Meeting Summarizers

...getting there

The big trillion dollar question right now is what can AI do for us beyond answer questions via ChatGPT? How can LLM AI in particular, ‘augment’ us in our daily work? One possible way is for AI enhanced software to ‘attend meetings’ for us, particularly online ones, and report back with highlights, summaries, action items, reports, and general productivity boosting steps that get us ahead in our work day.

The Washington Post took a stab at evaluating two AI tools in particular that have been rolled out in this context. One is from the ubiquitous Zoom (yes, that Zoom with the recent AI missteps), and Otter.ai (their animated AI teamwork logo above).

As they lay out the critical question: “Can AI summaries save you from endless virtual meetings?” Here is the current landscape of options:

“Video conferencing service Zoom and transcription software provider Otter.ai recently rolled out generative AI meeting features that provide automated summaries and key points, action items to follow and the ability to share notes with the participants.” 

“Google is also working on releasing features and Microsoft is testing some with select customers. The hope is that AI will help workers keep better track of what happens in meetings, whether they attend or not. AI could also help automatically schedule follow-up meetings or draft emails based on items from the meeting.”

What’s striking is how many folks have tried these offerings already:

“Zoom says it has nearly 216,000 businesses using its service, with total users collectively joining meetings hundreds of millions of times each day. Otter.ai says it has more than 10 million registered users.”

So there is a potential market out there. The results are encouraging with some caveats for where we are with the technologies, not just the AI chops, but the sound conferencing infrastrucure used in these meetings. Lots of details in the piece, but here is the high level summary:

“Zoom and Otter’s AI meeting tools weren’t perfect, but they did have some benefits.”

Both gave us a general sense of what was discussed, what was assigned, deadlines along with some to-do items. Zoom IQ meeting summary provided an editable summary broken down in chapters followed by next steps.”

“OtterPilot, which shows up as a separate guest in virtual meetings on Zoom, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams, serves a live transcript alongside tabs with the live summary, topics including questions asked and follow-up steps and a chatbot that will answer inquiries or generate text for follow-up emails.”

The issues mostly had to do when the systems couldn’t ‘hear’ what was said precisely, or when speakers overlapped voices/accents and/or ideas quickly:

“Several times the services misheard words. In our case, that led to the creation of nonexistent people who were either assigned to-do items or listed as parts of a story in the AI-generated summaries.”

This piece is less about these two products from these companies and more about the broader aspiration of tech companies large and small, old and new, to morph these emerging AI technologies into far more useful ‘Smart Agents’, assistants and companions, that can help us do things better. So that we can ‘Ask them anything”. And to do ‘anything’. Preferably with less of our involvement and attention over time. 

And the services are illustrative in that the early products are promising, and to be used with care and caveats. But like most technologies, they’re going to get really better over time. Because these AI systems, as OpenAI co-founder and Chief Scientist pithily says, “They just want to Learn”. Stay tuned. 

(NOTE: The discussions here are for information purposes only, and not meant as investment advice at any time. Thanks for joining us here).