The short answer
To transcribe a meeting with AI, first tell everyone and get their agreement, because some places, including California, Illinois and Florida, require consent from every participant. Then use the tool you already have: in Microsoft Teams select More actions, then Transcribe; in Google Meet click Take notes for me (needs an eligible Workspace or Google AI plan). Otter.ai's free Basic plan gives 300 minutes a month, and Fireflies.ai has a free plan too. For a recording, upload the audio to Gemini or ChatGPT.
Consent first: what you need before you press record
This is the step people skip, and the one that causes real trouble. Recording laws differ by place. Otter's own help centre explains that some jurisdictions only need the person recording to know about it (single-party consent), while others need every participant to be told and to agree (all-party consent). It names California, Illinois and Florida, "along with many international jurisdictions", as all-party places, and suggests that teams working across regions apply all-party practice everywhere. That is our advice too. This is not legal advice; if you record customer or patient calls, ask your legal or compliance team what applies to you.
The risk is not theoretical. Otter.ai faces a class action in a US federal court alleging its Notetaker recorded people without the consent of all participants. A bot that joins every calendar meeting by default is exactly how that happens.
A simple consent routine that works anywhere:
- Say it in the invite. Add a line such as "This meeting will be transcribed with [tool] for notes. Tell me if you would rather it was not."
- Say it again at the start, out loud, before the transcript starts, and give people a real chance to object.
- Stop if anyone objects. Remove the bot or stop transcription and take notes by hand.
- Use the tool's own notices as well (each tool's settings are below), but do not rely on them alone.
- Decide who gets the transcript and how long you keep it, before it is created.
Other things you need: the meeting platform you use, the right plan (see each tool below), and, for recorded files, the audio itself.
How to transcribe a Microsoft Teams meeting
These steps follow Microsoft's Teams help page.
- In the meeting, select More actions in the meeting controls.
- Select Transcribe.
- Confirm the language everyone is speaking and select Confirm.
- Everyone sees a notification that the meeting is being transcribed. Participants can choose to hide their identity in captions and transcripts.
- To stop, select More actions, then Recording or Transcribing. When you record a meeting, transcription starts automatically.
To change the spoken language mid-meeting, open the dropdown next to Transcribing, choose Show transcript, then Language settings. Live translated transcripts need Teams Premium. With a Microsoft 365 Copilot licence, Copilot can then recap the meeting, and since October 2026 organisers can turn on intelligent recap without keeping a transcript.
How to transcribe a Google Meet call
- Check your plan. "Take notes for me" needs an eligible Google Workspace edition or Google AI plan; for personal accounts it arrived on 29 June 2026 in calls hosted by Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers.
- Join the meeting at meet.google.com and click Take notes for me at the top right. Organisers can also switch it on in Google Calendar: Edit event, Video call options, Meeting records, then tick "Take notes with Gemini".
- If your admin requires consent, each participant sees Start, Join, Continue or Leave before the feature runs.
- Notes go into a Google Doc, and the organiser gets an email with a link to the recap shortly after the meeting.
Google lists English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese and Spanish, one language per meeting, and recommends it for meetings of 15 minutes to 8 hours.
How to use Otter or Fireflies, with consent settings switched on
Otter.ai
- Sign up; the free Basic plan gives 300 transcription minutes a month, up to 30 minutes per conversation.
- Before the first meeting, go to Account Settings, then Meetings, and switch on Send pre-recording emails. Otter then emails every guest on the calendar event before Notetaker joins.
- Check the auto-join setting. Admins can set it in Manage Workspace, then Settings; the strictest option is meetings the member manually selects.
- In the meeting, Notetaker appears as a named participant and posts a chat message with a link to the live transcript. Keep that chat announcement on.
- If someone objects, the host removes Notetaker like any other participant and the meeting carries on unrecorded.
Privacy note: Otter's privacy policy, effective 16 June 2026, says it trains its own AI on de-identified recordings and transcripts, and no opt-out toggle is described.
Fireflies.ai
- Sign up. The free plan includes 400 minutes of storage and a 2-hour recording limit. For accounts created from 1 September 2026, unlimited free transcription only applies while auto-join for calendar meetings is on; with it off you get 3 meeting transcriptions.
- Open Settings from the left sidebar, click Compliance Notification and switch on "Participants are notified with your message". Guests get an email one hour before with a link to decline; if they click it, Fireflies does not join. Use the Team tab to apply this to the whole workspace.
- For calls where a bot is unwelcome, the desktop app's Take Notes option records system audio without a bot joining; speakers appear as Speaker 1, Speaker 2, and no audio or video is saved. You still need to tell people.
Fireflies says meeting content is never used to train AI models.
How to transcribe a recording you already have
- In the Gemini web app, click Add files, then Upload Files, choose the audio and click Submit. Free accounts can upload up to 10 minutes of audio in total per prompt; Google AI Pro and Ultra raise that to 3 hours.
- ChatGPT added audio uploads for transcribing and summarising on paid plans in October 2026.
- Otter's Basic plan allows 3 file imports in total; Pro allows 10 a month.
The consent question does not go away because the meeting is over. If people did not know they were recorded, do not upload it.
A worked example: a weekly client call
Lena runs a weekly call with a client in Chicago from Berlin, on Zoom. She adds a line to the recurring invite saying Fireflies will transcribe the call for notes and that anyone can opt out. She switches on Compliance Notification, so the client's team also gets the one-hour email with a decline link. At the start of the first call she asks, out loud, whether everyone is comfortable; a new person on the client side asks for it to be off for the pricing section, so Lena removes the bot for that part and takes those notes by hand. After the call she asks Fireflies' assistant for decisions and action items, checks them against her memory, corrects one owner's name, and sends the summary to the attendees only.
Common mistakes and how to fix them
- Auto-join on every meeting. The bot ends up in calls where nobody agreed. Fix: limit auto-join to meetings you choose or host.
- Relying on the bot's notice alone. Fix: announce it in the invite and out loud as well.
- Wrong language setting. The transcript turns to nonsense. Fix: set the spoken language before you start (Teams: Language settings).
- Trusting the summary. Names, numbers and owners are where AI summaries go wrong. Fix: check action items before sending them.
- Sharing the transcript with everyone on the invite. Fix: decide recipients first; Otter lets you set a default audience for shared notes to keep them private.
- Keeping transcripts forever. Fix: delete ones you do not need, and follow your company's retention rules.
Which AI tool to use to transcribe meetings
| Your situation | Use | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Your company uses Teams | Teams transcription, plus Microsoft 365 Copilot for recaps | Built in, everyone is notified, data stays in your tenant |
| Your company uses Google Workspace | Take notes for me in Meet | Notes land in Docs, admin can require consent |
| You meet across Zoom, Teams and Meet | Fireflies or Otter | One tool for every platform, with notice settings |
| You have a recording file | Gemini (10 minutes free) or ChatGPT (paid plans) | Upload and ask for a transcript and summary |
Our opinion: use what is built into your meeting platform first, because consent notices and data protection come with it. Add Fireflies or Otter only when you meet across platforms, and switch on their notice settings on day one. Compare them in Otter vs Fireflies, see Otter alternatives and the best AI for meeting notes, and get prompts in prompts for meeting notes. Tool guides: Otter, Fireflies, Copilot and Gemini.
Prompts to copy
Decisions and actions
From this transcript, list every decision made and every action item. For each action give the owner, the deadline if one was said, and the timestamp or quote it comes from. Mark anything unclear instead of guessing.
You get: A checkable action list
Summary for people who missed it
Write a summary of this meeting for [person or team] who missed it, in under 200 words: what was decided, what is still open, and what they need to do. Leave out side conversations and anything marked off the record.
You get: A short catch-up note
Clean transcript
Tidy this transcript: remove filler words and false starts, keep speaker labels, keep every sentence that contains a number, name, date or commitment exactly as said, and do not add anything.
You get: A readable transcript you can share
Follow-up email
Draft a follow-up email to the attendees of this meeting: thanks in one line, the decisions, the action items with owners and dates, and the date of the next meeting. Plain and short.
You get: A ready-to-edit follow-up
Consent notice for the invite
Write a two-sentence notice for a meeting invite saying the meeting will be transcribed with [tool] for notes, who will receive the notes, and how to opt out. Friendly and clear.
You get: Invite wording that asks for consent