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As of 13 August 2026, AI can transcribe your business meeting.
This still needs a person who signs their name to it.
Can you do it?
5 minutesto a draft.
30 minutesto something you’d act on.
Cost, all in£0
Skill needednone
Who has to check ityou
What the alternative costsFathom is described as a free-first AI notetaker that records, transcribes and summarises meetings.
If this goes wrong: a name, commitment or decision is transcribed incorrectly and the mistake is copied into minutes or acted on.
What to actually do
Hand it to a person
The route this page recommends
A person who owns the outcome does this end to end, worth it when the failure is dear.
Use a tool built for this
Second choiceDo it yourself
The distant thirdA chat interface, no skill needed, and roughly 30 minutes until you can act on the result.
How to actually do it
- Confirm that the meeting recording was made with the required permission and that attendees were told how the recording and transcript would be used.
- Open a meeting transcription tool such as Fathom, Fireflies.ai, Notta, Otter.ai or Sembly, then upload the recording or connect it to the meeting platform.
- Gather the meeting title, date, attendee names, roles, specialist terms and any known speaker order.
- Paste the supplied prompt into the tool and add the meeting context, attendee list and specialist terms in the bracketed sections.
- Export the full transcript with timestamps and the tool's uncertainty markers rather than relying on a summary alone.
- Play the recording while checking every decision, deadline, name, number and assigned action against the transcript, then correct the transcript and label any passage you still cannot hear.
- Send the corrected transcript to the meeting owner or relevant attendees for confirmation before using it as formal minutes or an instruction record.
Prompt
Transcribe the attached business meeting recording using British English. Do not summarise or improve the wording. Preserve the speakers' meaning and mark uncertain words as [unclear] rather than guessing. Add timestamps at least every two minutes and whenever the speaker changes. Identify speakers only when the recording or the information below makes that reliable; otherwise use Speaker 1, Speaker 2 and so on. Keep names, figures, dates, product names and commitments exactly as spoken where you can hear them. Create two sections: 1. Full transcript, 2. Items to check against the audio, listing every uncertain passage, speaker identification and important name or figure. Meeting context: [brief context]. Known attendees and likely speaker voices: [names and roles, if known].
Open it prefilled in ChatGPT or Claude, or copy it into Gemini, which takes no prefill link.
What it gets wrong
- It cannot obtain valid consent from every participant or decide whether your organisation may retain the recording.
- It separates speakers unreliably when people interrupt, speak quietly or use similar voices.
- It mishears names, figures, acronyms and specialist terms, especially in poor audio.
- It cannot decide whether an ambiguous remark was a firm decision, a suggestion or an action for someone.
- It produces a draft record, not evidence that every participant agrees with the wording.
Even on a YES, the friction has a name: consent and privacy, verification cost and context depth.
How we scored this
Five axes, each scored nought to two by hand: ten means AI carries the task cleanly, and the thresholds that turn a total into YES, PARTLY or NO are published in the methodology. Each axis name links to its definition.
| Axis | Score (0–2) |
|---|---|
| Output | 2 |
| Inputs | 2 |
| Verification | 1 |
| Liability | 1 |
| Effort delta | 2 |
| Total | 8 / 10 |
The methodology and its thresholds are published in full.
FAQ
- Can AI transcribe a recorded meeting?
- Yes. Current meeting notetakers can turn an uploaded recording or supported online meeting into a transcript with speaker labels, timestamps and search. Check important wording against the audio before treating it as the official record.
- Is it legal to record a business meeting in the UK?
- That depends on the circumstances, the people involved and how you use and retain the recording. Tell participants in advance, obtain the permission your organisation requires and check your workplace privacy policy or ask your data protection lead.
- Can AI tell who said what in a meeting?
- Often, but not reliably enough to skip checking. Give the tool the attendee names and compare every important attribution with the recording, particularly where people interrupt or speak over one another.
- Can AI make official meeting minutes?
- It can produce a useful first draft of minutes, including possible decisions and actions. A meeting owner should confirm the wording with the relevant attendees before the minutes become the formal record.
Nearby answers
Assessed by gpt-5.6-luna (gpt-5.6-luna) on 2026-08-13, second-checked by an independent model. Wrong somewhere? Email [email protected] and it gets re-checked.
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