In Google’s most recent Keynote, they introduced a new feature for Google Meet called Gemini. This AI-powered tool has been created to provide real-time transcription and note-taking, along with smart AI-summaries.
Gemini is still very new and not everybody has access to it yet, with a gradual rollout, however with the clout of Google it could be considered a powerful tool moving forward within the online video meeting sphere.
In this blog we’ll take a look at what Gemini is capable of, its benefits, its drawbacks and make recommendations on what might suit some business needs better.
What is Gemini for Google Meet?
Gemini is the Google Meet integrated AI-feature to create automatic meeting notes. The product has promised to improve productivity by offering a number of features –
Real-Time Transcription – The tool will be able to attend and automatically transcribe the meeting into written text. This then allows participants to review the conversation later on. According to Google it can generate different creative text formats, and complex questioning.
Automatic Note-Taking – Attendees can concentrate on their meetings at Gemini automatically take notes and highlight key points and action items as they are talked about in the meeting. Gemini boasts the ability to note things and then logically structure them.
AI-Summarization – Following the end of a meeting, Gemini can take the meeting notes and transcription and create a quick explanation of what happened, when and who said it, along with any key points. This is useful for a quick guide to what happened, along with being able to loop in people who weren’t able to attend the meeting.
Integration with Google Workspace – As a Google product, this means that Gemini integrates directly with your Google Workspace. It can also communicate with Gmail, Drive and Docs, making it easy to access as all notes are stored in Drive so people can easily find them.
How to Take Notes with Gemini on Google Meet
To use Gemini in Google Meet, follow these steps –
- Open Google Meet on your computer.
- Join or start a new meeting. Ensure that you are signed in with an account that has access to Google Workspace Labs features.
- Access Gemini Features –
– In the meeting interface, click on the “Activities” button located in the bottom-right corner.
– Select “Meeting notes” from the menu.
– Click “Take notes for me” to enable automatic note-taking. - Review and Edit Notes –
– After the meeting, you can review the notes generated by Gemini.
– Edit the notes as needed to ensure accuracy and completeness.
– Share the notes with meeting participants via Google Docs or Google Drive.
Why Gemini Might Not Be Enough
Google is such a large company it has become synonymous with the Internet, and while Gemini is being lorded as an amazing new innovation, it’s still very new and may have some limitations
Accuracy – As a new feature, even backed by the might of Google, they will likely still be in the early stages of accuracy. This means that the AI might misinterpret spoken words, potentially recording inaccuracies. This can be a big issue if you are dealing with technical jargon, or a very large meeting with multiple speakers.
Availability – Gemini is being slowly rolled out as part of Google Workplace Labs, but is also only going to be available for the Google Workspace as far as we can tell. This means that if your business is not Google native, isn’t integrated into the system, or even has different departments on different systems, there could be some silos as a result.
Functionality -As a tool that has been created to fit an already existing product, that is going to be aimed to mass appeal it may end up being light on things like customization and the completeness of notes. If there are specific organizational needs, it may not be able to serve those functions such as sales or looking at all the meetings at once.
User Experience – At this early stage, the user experience may not be fully up-to-speed as of yet. If you compare the first iteration of Gmail to how it looks now, you would find the original clunky and less intuitive, along with potentially slow. This, when applied to meeting software, could actually hamper some productivity as a result.
It’s Not New – While Google is this big household name, they haven’t invented something brand new and innovative to the market. This is something that companies have been working on and perfecting for years as their core focus. As a result, while it may have an initial flurry of effort put into Gemini by Google it will potentially already lack features other tools have, and run the risk of being shelved (Google Glass, Google Plus) at a later date.
An Alternative for Gemini For Google Meet
If you are looking for a Gemini alternative, or perhaps don’t have access to Gemini just yet, then consider looking at tl;dv.
This is feature-rich alternative has several advantages to Gemini
Multi-Meeting Notes Management – If you have multiple meetings at once the tool can handle it. It has it’s own internal organizational structure that makes it easy to search, track and find things in a centralized system. You can also ask the smart AI questions about all meetings, and it will search all of them and give you an AI-driven response to your query.
Customization Options – Along with regular customizable reports that can be set-up, tl;dv allows far more customization. From tags, notes and how highlights are created (you can even create little highlight reels using the AI). It makes it a lot more relevant and actionable as a result.
Integration with Other Tools – Where Gemini is Google native it works with Google, however tl;dv seamlessly integrates with various platforms such as Slack, Notion, and HubSpot. This integration allows you to synchronize meeting notes with other tools your team uses, enhancing productivity and collaboration. It also works with Zoom and Microsoft Teams making it easier to work with external organizations who don’t use Google Meet.
Easy To Use Search and Highlighting – tl;dv makes it simple to search for, and highlight, key moments from a meeting. And the AI functionality also learns and gets smarter with you so it can often highlight itself.
Participant Insights – With advanced speaker analytics, and the chance at using it for sales coaching, it can provide feedback to help you and your team communicate more effectively. It’s also helpful for understanding team dynamics with the use of speaking time evaluation, ensuring that everybody has a voice in meetings.
Summarization and Sharing – With an already tried-and-tested AI summarization ability, tl;dv make sure that all the key points are easy to read and access.
User-Friendly Interface – With a number of years already tweaking and adjusting the user interface from customer-feedback, tl;dv’s interface is easy to navigate. This enhances the overall user experience and ensures that team members can quickly access and use the tool effectively.
Comprehensive Support – With a large help center, informative blog and Customer Success support, if users have any questions it’s easy to find out or get in touch with someone who can help.
Gemini Vs tl;dv
While Gemini looks like a promising addition to the Google Workspace, it does have some limitations and requires a lot of trust and assumption that people want to be Google native. However, with several years of experience in the note-taking, AI-meeting assistant space, tl;dv offers a lot more features, functionality and a user-friendly interface that could be considered a superior alternative to Gemini at this point.
If you are interested in trying it out for yourself, then tl;dv has a free tier that can be tested on Google Meet, as well as Microsoft Teams and Zoom. Try it out for yourself and see how it can transform your meeting experience moving forward.
With Google about to launch note taking as part of its Gemini AI capability, how does it compare to tl;dv?
