Read.ai vs Fireflies vs Otter.ai - My Experience with AI Tools for Meeting Notes

The speaker shares their experience using AI tools for meeting notes, specifically Read.ai, Fireflies, and Otter.ai. They find Read.ai to be the most effective, providing a comprehensive meeting summary and detailed transcription. The speaker criticizes Otter.ai for its basic functionality and lack of actionable features, and Fireflies for its focus on transcription without additional value. Despite a minor inconvenience in sharing meeting notes, the speaker appreciates Read.ai's automatic meeting detection and participant sending features, concluding that it's worth the monthly subscription for their needs.

Takeaways

• 📚 The speaker has been struggling with organizing and summarizing meeting notes due to a busy schedule.
• 🕒 The speaker finds it challenging to refer back to meeting discussions weeks later due to poor note-taking.
• 📝 The speaker's current note-taking method is unstructured, making it difficult to retain and utilize information effectively.
• 🔍 The speaker has been exploring AI tools to assist with meeting note organization and summarization.
• 🏆 Read.ai is identified as the best tool among those tested, including Otter.ai and Fireflies.ai.
• 🚫 Otter.ai is criticized for its basic functionality and lack of detailed action items or highlights.
• 🚧 Fireflies.ai is also deemed insufficient, primarily offering transcription without additional valuable features.
• 📊 Read.ai provides a meeting summary, which the speaker appreciates for its ability to condense transcribed content.
• 🗣️ Read.ai also offers insights into meeting engagement and identifies the most active speakers.
• 🔗 A drawback of Read.ai is the requirement to log in to share meeting notes, which the speaker finds inconvenient.
• 📈 The speaker suggests that a webhook feature would be beneficial for integrating notes into an internal system.
• 💰 Despite some shortcomings, the speaker considers Read.ai worth the monthly subscription for their needs.

Q & A

What is the main problem the speaker is facing with their meetings?

The speaker is struggling with organizing and summarizing notes from multiple meetings throughout the day, which makes it difficult to refer back to them later.

What is the format of the notes that the speaker typically uses?

The speaker uses a preset organization in OneNote, where they categorize notes by days of the week, such as 'Tuesday meeting notes' or 'Wednesday meeting notes'.

Why does the speaker consider the notes taken with the iPad tablet and pencil to be unstructured?

The notes taken with the iPad tablet and pencil, while allowing the speaker to retain information, lack a structured format that would enable further organization or action.

Which AI tool does the speaker find to be the best for their needs?

The speaker finds Read.ai to be the best AI tool for their needs, as it provides a summary of the meeting and a full transcript, along with additional features.

What are the speaker's main issues with Otter.ai and Fireflies.ai?

The speaker finds Otter.ai and Fireflies.ai to be lacking in functionality. Both tools provide basic transcription services but do not offer the structured summaries or advanced features that Read.ai provides.

How does Read.ai handle meeting organization and summarization?

Read.ai automatically summarizes the transcribed content of the meeting, provides a meeting score and engagement metrics, and identifies who spoke the most during the meeting.

What is the speaker's main concern with the sharing feature of Read.ai?

The speaker is frustrated that they cannot share meeting notes without requiring the recipient to log into the Read.ai tool. They would prefer an independent share that allows recipients to view the content directly.

What additional feature does the speaker wish Read.ai had?

The speaker would like Read.ai to have a webhook feature that could automatically trigger their internal services and send out emails to meeting participants after the meeting concludes.

What is the speaker's opinion on the cost of using Read.ai?

The speaker believes that Read.ai is worth the $10 monthly subscription fee for the features and convenience it provides.

How does the speaker feel about the formatting of the meeting notes in Read.ai?

The speaker finds the formatting of the meeting notes in Read.ai to be less than ideal, with a lot of unnecessary information surrounding the core content. They would prefer a cleaner, more streamlined presentation.

What is the speaker's process for handling meeting notes after using Read.ai?

The speaker manually copies and pastes the raw text from Read.ai into a notepad or similar application to clean up the formatting before sharing or further editing.

Outlines

00:00

😀 Struggling with Meeting Notes Organization

The speaker discusses their recent experience with artificial intelligence tools, particularly focusing on the challenges they face in summarizing and organizing notes from numerous meetings throughout the day. They mention their poor note-taking habits and the difficulty in referring back to important discussions after some time has passed. The speaker also shares their use of OneNote for preset organization and the limitations they encounter with their current note-taking method, which lacks structure and functionality.

05:01

🤖 AI Tools for Meeting Summarization

The speaker evaluates different AI tools aimed at improving their meeting note organization. They have been using Otter.ai and Fireflies.ai on a trial basis and share their experiences with both. The speaker finds Otter to be basic in functionality, providing transcriptions but lacking in features beyond that. They express dissatisfaction with Fireflies.ai, noting that it also primarily focuses on transcription without offering additional tools. The speaker then highlights ReadThatAI as the superior tool, praising its summarization capabilities, meeting score engagement, and detailed transcript view. However, they also mention a con regarding the sharing feature, which requires users to log in to access shared content, and the lack of a webhook for automated integration with other services. Despite these drawbacks, the speaker concludes that ReadThatAI is worth the monthly subscription for their needs and appreciates its ability to automatically join meetings through calendar integration.

Keywords

Artificial Intelligence Tools

Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools are software applications that use machine learning and natural language processing to perform tasks that would typically require human intelligence. In the context of the video, these tools are used to automate the process of taking and organizing meeting notes, which is a significant time-saver for the speaker.

Meeting Notes

Meeting notes are written records of discussions, decisions, and action items from a meeting. They are essential for tracking what was discussed and agreed upon. In the video, the speaker struggles with organizing these notes due to the high volume of meetings attended, which is where AI tools come into play.

Read.ai

Read.ai is an AI tool mentioned in the video that is used for summarizing and organizing meeting notes. The speaker found it to be the most effective among the tools tested, as it provides a summary of the meeting, identifies key topics, and allows for easy sharing of the notes.

Otter.ai

Otter.ai is another AI tool that transcribes and summarizes meetings. However, the speaker found it to be less effective than Read.ai, as it lacked some features like detailed action items and highlights, and the speaker felt it was more basic in functionality.

Fireflies.ai

Fireflies.ai is a third AI tool discussed in the video, which also transcribes meetings. The speaker's experience with Fireflies.ai was not satisfactory, as it seemed to focus more on transcription and did not provide additional value in terms of note organization or summarization.

Transcription

Transcription is the process of converting spoken language into written form. It is a key feature of the AI tools discussed in the video. While all the tools provided transcription, the speaker preferred Read.ai for its additional features beyond basic transcription.

Action Items

Action items are tasks or steps that need to be taken following a meeting. They are crucial for implementing decisions made during the meeting. The speaker was disappointed with the lack of clear action items in the notes provided by Otter.ai and Fireflies.ai.

Summarization

Summarization is the process of condensing information into a brief form while retaining the essential points. In the context of the video, the speaker values AI tools that can summarize meeting content, making it easier to review and understand the key points discussed.

Sharing Notes

Sharing notes refers to the ability to distribute meeting notes to other participants or stakeholders. The speaker expressed a desire for a more straightforward sharing process without the need for recipients to log into the tool, which is a feature they found lacking in some of the AI tools.

Webhook

A webhook is a way for an application to provide other applications with real-time information. The speaker mentions a desire for a webhook feature that would allow the AI tool to automatically integrate with their internal services after a meeting, which would streamline their workflow.

Google Calendar Integration

Google Calendar Integration refers to the ability of an application to connect with and automatically access information from a user's Google Calendar. The speaker appreciates this feature in Read.ai as it allows the tool to automatically join and record meetings based on the calendar events.

Highlights

The user has been struggling with summarizing and organizing notes from multiple daily meetings.

AI tools are being reviewed to help manage meeting notes more efficiently.

The user finds their current note-taking method unstructured and non-actionable.

Read.ai is identified as the best AI tool for meeting notes after comparing it with Otter.ai and Fireflies.ai.

Otter.ai provides basic transcription and prompts for upgrades, lacking in functionality.

Fireflies.ai focuses on transcription but does not offer additional valuable features during the trial period.

Read.ai offers a meeting summary, which the user appreciates.

Read.ai provides engagement scores and identifies the most active speakers in a meeting.

The user criticizes the sharing feature of Read.ai for requiring a login to view content.

The user suggests a need for more programmatic tools to better organize and share meeting notes.

Read.ai is considered worth the monthly subscription for the user's personal needs.

The user prefers if Read.ai could integrate with internal services via a webhook for automated note processing.

Read.ai has the ability to send meeting notes to participants, although the user finds the formatting not ideal.

The user appreciates Read.ai's automatic connection to the calendar and joining meetings.

The user concludes that Read.ai is the most effective tool for managing meeting notes among the ones tried.

The user plans to continue using Read.ai for its features and integration with daily meeting schedules.