Slack Can Use AI to Transcribe Your Huddle Conversations Right Now
As companies continue to push AI as anything from a web designer to the equivalent of an entire movie studio , one of its most proven uses has become the job of a personal secretary and, in particular, a stenographer. Apple and Google are adding AI-generated transcripts to your phone calls, and now it’s coming to your office.
Technically, AI transcripts have long been part of work culture thanks to third-party sites like Otter.ai , and more recently even video calling apps themselves like Zoom or Google Meet . The idea is for the AI to take notes while you’re talking so you can be fully present in the meeting or so people who miss it can quickly get back to work. Unfortunately, the reality turned out to be a little more limited, but Slack is now aiming to provide more detailed AI meeting notes than its competitors.
While AI Companion’s Zoom and Google Meet’s Gemini integration are more focused on high-level meeting summaries, Slack claims AI meeting notes are more fully featured. Here, the company promises an AI-powered bot will take a full transcript of your meeting, although you’ll still get high-level notes, with the latter focusing on key quotes, activities, and shared files.
Anyone in the channel or direct message where the chat started will be able to view the transcript and notes, which will help maintain their privacy while still allowing people to keep track of what was said, even regular collaborators who may have been present on that particular call.
Whether this is enough to get teams to switch from taking calls via Zoom to taking them via Slack is still in question. Personally, I think I would benefit more from a transcription than a summary, since the notes require the AI to make judgments about what is important enough and what is not. Meanwhile, automatic transcription will simply save me from getting tired during the day.
Slack AI, which Notes is a part of, is available now and, like Gemini for Google Workspace or Zoom AI Companion, is a paid add-on for the Pro, Business+, and Enterprise plans . If your team has one, you can simply click the Slack AI button in the bottom left corner of your chat and then click “Start Notes” in the next pop-up window to start transcribing. My team doesn’t have this plan (yet), so I unfortunately haven’t been able to test it myself.
Slack AI Notes complements existing features including text-based conversation summaries .