As a reporter and a generally type-A person, I have used AI notetakers for years. I currently rely on two, but ChatGPT's new feature may have just knocked one out of my rotation.
On Wednesday, OpenAI launched a Meetings plugin that functions as a note-taker in the newly launched ChatGPT Space tab. It works exactly as described: you hop into a meeting, it listens in, takes notes, generates a transcript, and then, at the end of the meeting, provides a detailed summary with bullet points and action items.
I tried it with The Deep View's Jason Hiner on a quick catch-up call, and the summary and follow-up items were on the mark. The transcript also looked good in terms of transcription-to-word fidelity. However, there is a catch: the transcript does not have labels for who was in the conversation or options to add them, and you cannot go back and relisten to the audio. So it essentially functions as a Granola substitute rather than an Otter.ai replacement.
As someone who uses Otter.ai and Granola for capturing meetings, there's a place for both. I like that using Granola feels less intrusive for the other people on the call, and, quite honestly, I rarely need an audio recording of my team meetings. Mostly, I want a rundown of what occurred and a way to quickly index what was said by asking the assistant, such as "When did he say the team dinner was?" That's something Granola and ChatGPT's new note-taking feature can do.
While the version of Granola I use now is free, the incentive to switch to the ChatGPT version is that it helps me avoid context switching by keeping all my notes and transcripts alongside the chatbot I use every day for all my personal AI queries. In fact, OpenAI shares that everything ChatGPT knows about you and the work you have done together will be used to inform the personalized summary and next step section. That said, for calls in which I need to verify what was said and where accuracy matters, such as interviews for articles, I will have to keep using Otter.ai and its more thorough audio capture—and hefty subscription.
Our Deeper View #
A winning move for OpenAI would be to concentrate more of AI's capabilities into its own application, as it would keep users from using third-party apps because of the convenience of having everything in one place and the added benefits that come from more ways to expand the context it has for a user, if they opt in. Of course, the dangers then become any one AI company wielding too much power by monopolizing the platform and hurting its competitors. Ideally, ChatGPT would become more of a hub where all the different applications live, with ChatGPT integrations building another layer. That's a vision Sam Altman says he's aligned with. At OpenAI DevDay, Altman told the media, "We want to figure out how to put this everywhere and drive people, revenue and customers and help people create these new things and make the most robust, richest ecosystem we can."