How to Use ChatGPT for Meeting Notes

Managing multiple meetings can be daunting for remote professionals, especially when handling administrative tasks like taking notes, tracking decisions, and sharing minutes. The manual process can be time-consuming, stressful, and prone to errors, leading to miscommunication and potential setbacks. 

But what if there was a way to automate this process and make it more efficient? In this blog post, we explore the use of AI, specifically the powerful (and most popular) language model ChatGPT, to streamline meeting notes and an even better alternative - Tactiq. 

Here's a quick look at what we'll be covering:

• Can ChatGPT Summarize Meeting Transcripts?
• Pros and Cons of Using ChatGPT for Meetings
• Tactiq: The Best ChatGPT Alternative for Meeting Notes

What is ChatGPT?

You might already be familiar with ChatGPT. Who hasn’t heard of it, right?

But just in case you missed it…here’s the lowdown:

ChatGPT is a revolutionary AI language model developed by OpenAI. You may have used it to draft emails, create content, or answer questions. But have you ever considered how this powerhouse could help you with meeting notes?

ChatGPT uses machine learning to understand, generate and respond to human-like text, making it a versatile tool in many contexts, including your professional life. Imagine having an assistant that never sleeps and can provide accurate, concise summaries of your meetings. The possibilities are endless!

Here are the most common ways to use ChatGPT for meetings:

• Preparation: It can help draft meeting agendas based on your goal, ensuring you stay organized and on-point during the meeting.
• Brainstorming: It can generate ideas and provide insights during brainstorming sessions.
• Minute Writing: It can help in writing detailed meeting minutes right after the session.
• Follow-up Emails: It can craft follow-up emails and messages based on key decisions and actions from the meeting.
• Transcription: It can turn your spoken words into written text, which is ideal for remote professionals who prefer to discuss ideas verbally. 
• Summary: Most importantly, it can summarize lengthy meeting transcripts, providing a condensed and comprehensible version of the discussions.

With ChatGPT, staying on top of meetings has never been easier. Let's delve deeper into that last point – summarizing meeting transcripts.

Can ChatGPT Summarize Meeting Transcripts?

Absolutely! ChatGPT can summarize meeting transcripts, a feature that can be incredibly helpful for super-long meetings. If you've ever found yourself with pages of transcripts, this is where ChatGPT truly shines.

To use ChatGPT for meeting summaries, simply provide it with the full transcript and use specific prompts to request a summary. The AI then processes the content, identifies the key points, and delivers a brief summary.

Here are a few prompts:

• "Can you summarize the key decisions from this transcript?"
• "What were the main discussion points in this meeting?"
• "Give me a brief overview of the action items discussed."
• "Who were assigned tasks in this meeting, and what are those tasks?"
• "Highlight the main challenges or issues discussed in this meeting."

Providing concise summaries from large amounts of text allows you to focus more on actionable items and less on documentation. Read our blog post, ChatGPT Prompts Template for Meeting: The Ultimate Guide, to learn more about how to use meeting prompts. 

As a content manager, I also use meeting transcripts to generate ideas for content. For example, when I’m doing a workshop on AI, I would identify key insights I shared and then turn them into LinkedIn posts.

Pros and Cons Of Using ChatGPT for Meetings 

ChatGPT brings a host of benefits to your professional workflow, especially when it comes to handling meeting notes. Yet, like any tool, it isn't without its limitations. Balancing the pros and cons can help you maximize its potential and understand where human input is still vital.

Pros

• Efficiency: ChatGPT automates the process of note-taking and summarizing, saving you considerable time.
• Accuracy: It delivers precise and consistent summaries, minimizing the risk of human error or oversight.
• Availability: As an AI, ChatGPT is available round the clock to assist you, making it ideal for professionals working across different time zones.
• Versatility: Beyond summarizing, it can also help draft meeting agendas, write follow-up emails, and transcribe verbal discussions.

Cons

• Requires Prompts: While powerful, ChatGPT isn't completely autonomous. It needs prompts to provide summaries, which means you have to specify what you want.
• Limitations on Text Length: There's a limit to the transcript length that can be input for summarization, which can be challenging with particularly long meetings.
• Contextual Understanding: Although impressive, AI understanding is still not on par with human comprehension, especially when it comes to nuanced conversations.
• Language Limitations: Currently, ChatGPT primarily works in English, which could be a limitation for multilingual meetings.

I run content teams in the Philippines, and we speak Tagalog. ChatGPT can translate text from Tagalog to English (and vice versa). But most transcription tools can’t transcribe Tagalog voice to text. So, we don’t have a transcript in Tagalog. This may be the case for your language.
But if you write and speak in English, there’s really nothing to worry about! 

Despite these limitations, ChatGPT still provides an efficient way to manage meeting notes. But what if we could take it a step further? What if there was a way to have an AI that could seamlessly integrate with your meetings, take notes, and provide summaries without manually copy-pasting the transcript? 

How Do You Automate Meeting Notes?

While the power of ChatGPT significantly makes it easy to summarize notes, the fact remains that it isn't entirely autonomous. For a seamless experience, various solutions can help automate meeting notes.

Use Built-In Note-taking in Microsoft Teams or Zoom

These platforms offer built-in note-taking features, which can be a good starting point for automating your meeting notes. The limitation here is that you're restricted to the platform. This solution might lack the necessary flexibility if you're coordinating with multiple teams or contractors who prefer different conferencing tools, such as Google Meet.

Leverage Notion's AI Feature

Notion has an AI feature that can help summarize your meeting transcripts. More and more project management tools are integrating ChatGPT tools into their workflows, so this can be an alternative solution for you. 

However, this process still requires you to download the transcript, upload it to Notion, and provide prompts for summary. This can be cumbersome and time-consuming. 

Integrate an AI Tool with ChatGPT Built-in

The best alternative is to use a comprehensive tool like Tactiq, which has ChatGPT built into its functionality. Tactiq can transcribe conversations in real time and generate meeting summaries using the power of ChatGPT. It automatically identifies and highlights key decisions and action items, providing a seamless, hands-off experience.

Tactiq: The Best ChatGPT Alternative for Meeting Notes

If you're looking for a comprehensive solution to automate your meeting notes, Tactiq is the perfect fit. As an advanced AI tool, Tactiq has integrated ChatGPT into its functionality, taking the best of both worlds to offer you an autonomous note-taking experience.

Here are the pros of using an ai meeting note like Tactiq: 

• Platform Independence: You can use Tactiq with any video conferencing tool, ensuring flexibility and convenience, no matter who you're meeting with.
• No Need for Prompts: Tactiq's built-in AI capabilities mean you don't have to worry about thinking up the right prompts for summarization.
• Custom Prompts with AI Meeting Kits: If you want to create custom prompts, Tactiq allows you to do so with its AI Meeting Kits feature.

AI Meeting Kits offer a unique way to streamline your note-taking process further. These kits allow you to create and save customized prompts based on your typical meeting patterns. 

For example, if you regularly conduct project update meetings, you can create an AI Meeting Kit that automatically prompts for "key project updates," "risks identified," and "next steps." This way, you can reuse the same kit for all similar meetings, ensuring consistency and ease.

How to Start Using Tactiq to Transcribe and Take Notes on Your Next Meeting 

1. Install Tactiq on your Google Chrome browser. 
2. Connect your preferred video conferencing tool. 
3. Once you join your next call, you’ll see the Tactiq window on the right side of the screen. 

This is where you’ll see the real-time transcript. There will be auto-highlights, but you can also manually highlight sentences and take notes. They’ll all be recorded and part of your transcript after the call.

As a project manager, Tactiq is my absolute favorite tool. Plus, I have anxiety. Having Tactiq has helped me better manage my anxiety because I know I have a record of everything. 

The Future is Bright for AI-Powered Meeting Notes

ChatGPT and Tactiq have revolutionized how we approach meeting notes. From transcribing to summarizing, AI-powered note-taking saves time and ensures accuracy. But it's not without its challenges. 

That’s why the ability of Tactiq to integrate ChatGPT's strengths and add extra features like custom prompts shows the transformative potential of AI in our professional lives. Despite current limitations, we can look forward to a future where AI tools make meetings more streamlined and efficient. The journey of AI in meetings is just starting, and the road ahead is promising.