Google Gemini AI Meeting Notes: Our Honest Review

If you’ve joined a Google Meet call recently, you might have seen a pop-up saying that Google can take meeting notes for you through Gemini, their AI assistant.

According to Google: “Take Notes for Me automatically takes notes, allowing you to focus more during your meetings.”

The feature, available on certain paid Google Workspace plans, generates an AI summary and transcript from your Google Meet calls.

Of course, this isn’t the first time we’ve seen AI take on meeting notes. AI meeting notetakers like Fellow have been around for a while, offering transcription and summarization, often with higher accuracy and more advanced features.

Many teams already rely on AI meeting assistants to record, transcribe, and summarize their discussions. So the real question is, how does Gemini stack up as an alternative?

After testing it out, I’d say this: while Gemini works smoothly with Google Meet and delivers on the basics (a summary and transcript), it doesn’t match what dedicated AI meeting assistants provide. Between slow delivery, lack of language support, and missing key integrations, it feels more like a starting point than a complete solution.

Let's take a closer look:

How Gemini’s AI notetaker works

1. First you need to be in a Business Standard or Business Plus Google Workspace to access “Take Notes for Me.”

2. While in a Google Meet call, click the "Take Notes with Gemini" option at the top right.

3. Use the checkboxes to select whether you want to transcribe and/or record the meeting.

4. Click “Start taking notes.” If Host Management is turned on in Google Meet, only the host can complete this step.

Once Gemini begins, the icon in the top right corner can be clicked again if at any point you want to stop note-taking. As well, if someone joins the meeting partway through, they can click the Gemini icon to see a “summary so far,” detailing what has already been discussed.

After the meeting, your notes, transcription, and recording will be stored in your Google Drive. Google will also send an email once each item is ready. They will be automatically shared via email with whoever was on the calendar invite for the meeting.

7 limitations we found in Google Gemini’s “take notes for me” feature

Gemini’s “Take Notes for Me” feature delivers an AI summary of what was discussed in a Google Meet call, along with an optional transcript and recording. However, it’s worth taking a closer look at the quality of those deliverables, as well as the other limitations that may mean Gemini isn’t the best meeting notes solution for your team.

1. Disjointed files that don't work together

One of the biggest issues with Google Gemini’s “Take Notes for Me” is how it handles your meeting outputs. Instead of keeping everything in one place, Gemini creates separate files: a summary, a transcript, and a recording, and drops them into Google Drive.

Yes, the files link to each other, but it’s a clunky experience. You can’t click a point in the summary to jump into the transcript, or move from the transcript directly to the right timestamp in the recording.

With a purpose-built AI meeting assistant like Fellow, those elements are fully integrated. You can move seamlessly between notes, transcripts, and recordings from the same meeting. More importantly, you can ask Fellow questions across all your meetings and get aggregated answers that pull from different transcripts. That means if a decision or detail was discussed in multiple calls, Fellow can surface it in one clear response, something Gemini can’t do.

2. Limited language support

As of March 2025, Google expanded “Take Notes for Me” beyond English to include French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, and Spanish. That’s a step forward, but it’s still a narrow list compared to what global teams often need.

Many organizations work across dozens of regions and require support for far more languages in order to collaborate effectively. This is where a purpose-built AI meeting assistant like Fellow has a clear edge. Fellow supports transcription and note-taking in over 90 languages, making it a much more practical solution for international companies or any team that regularly works with multilingual clients and partners.

3. Slow, inaccurate transcription and a too-simple summary

The most important thing to evaluate about Google Gemini’s “Take Notes for Me” is how accurate and useful the notes and transcript are.

I tested both the summary and transcript for myself by calling a colleague. The first issue is that it takes some time for Google to create these. The transcript in particular took longer to appear in my Google Drive than the summary. And in both cases, it took significantly longer for the email to arrive in my inbox telling me these files were ready. This will quickly become an issue for anyone in back-to-back meetings that needs to quickly follow-up on calls.

As for the quality, the summary was accurate, but short, with very little detail. Gemini created a summary that was a few sentences long as well as three bullet point “details.” For a work meeting where many decisions may have been made this simply isn’t sufficient to fully capture what was discussed. For a product manager, for example, this summary wouldn’t be enough to capture technical details and specific decisions.

The transcript arrived accurately labeled with who was speaking, but contained numerous inaccuracies as well as misspelled words. The transcript even says at the end, “This editable transcript was computer generated and might contain errors. People can also change the text after it was created.”

4. Gemini can only be used with Google Meet

Being a Google product, Gemini’s note taker only works with Google Meet. While that may be enough for some organizations, anyone who uses Zoom, Microsoft Teams, or another video conferencing app is out of luck.

That’s also a limitation for calls with third parties, such as customers, agencies, or freelancers, as you may be using multiple video conferencing services in your workflow.

5. Gemini stops at notes, nothing to help you before or after the meeting

Getting a summary, transcript, and recording is useful, but that doesn’t automatically make your meetings productive. Gemini’s “Take Notes for Me” only captures what was said, it doesn’t help with anything else around your meeting.

For example, you won’t get a quick pre-meeting brief reminding you what was discussed last time. And after the call, the follow-up email you get is just a set of links to files, no real context or next steps.

Dedicated AI meeting assistants go further by helping you prep before meetings and follow up afterwards, so the whole process feels smoother and more useful.

6. No integrations with CRMs or project management tools

Let’s say you’re a sales rep and you’ve just recorded a call with a prospect using Google Gemini. You have a transcript and summary, but how do you get that information into your CRM? The only answer is tedious, manual work.

The same is true if you’re an engineering lead and need to connect what was discussed in the meeting to issues on your Jira or Linear board. Again, the only way to do that is manually.

The items discussed in meetings don’t just stay in the meeting, they tie into your entire tech stack and your other productivity tools. An AI meeting assistant should make sure all those apps talk to each other, but Gemini doesn’t offer any integrations.

7. Gemini is only available on some Google Workspace plans

Finally, another significant factor of Gemini meeting notes is that they’re simply not available to everyone. According to Google, only Business Standard and Business Plus workspaces can use this feature. For context, Business Standard costs $12 per user per month, and Business Plus costs $18 per user per month.

If you’re already on one of these plans, then Gemini is now included. However, given the cost and other limitations listed here, it’s simply not worth getting a Google Workspace if what you really want is an AI meeting assistant.

Gemini vs. Fellow: Feature comparison

Of all the Google meet notetaker alternatives, Fellow is the one built from the ground up with high security and privacy standards as well as support before, during, and after meetings. Fellow also integrates with not only Google Meet, but also Zoom and Microsoft teams, as well as CRMs like HubSpot and Salesforce and project management tools like Linear and Jira.

Fellow is our choice as the best alternative and upgrade to Google Gemini’s “Take Notes for Me” and here we’ll review the features that support our pick.

1. Industry-leading security and privacy

If having privacy and security controls is something your organization cares about, Fellow is the clear choice when adopting an AI meeting assistant.

The meeting data Fellow collects is never used to train our AI, period. You are also in full control of how long your data remains with Fellow and all of the data is encrypted. As well, Fellow uses SSO and multi-factor authentication and is SOC 2, HIPAA, GDPR, and CCPA compliant.

Fellow users also maintain control over which meetings are recorded and summarized. Organizations can establish a rule set that determines, for example, that meetings labelled “legal” aren’t joined by our meeting bot. And, in any call, recording can be paused and restarted at any time with a click.

Fellow’s recording and recap library is also built with customizable permissions options, so only the team members you want to will have access to any given meeting data.

You can read more about Fellow’s security and privacy protocols in our Trust center.

2. Redaction at the ready

If you have a meeting and accidentally forget to pause recording during a sensitive topic, what do you do? With Gemini, you can edit the transcript, but it will still appear in the document’s history. And the recording can’t be edited at all, only deleted.

With Fellow, users can retroactively redact portions of their meetings. With this feature, the selected passage is permanently deleted from the recording, transcript, and summary.

3. One central hub for recordings, transcripts, notes

Unlike having unorganized files scattered across your Google Drive, Fellow centralizes all your meeting data in one app, including recordings, transcripts, and meeting notes.

In Fellow, your recording, transcript, and notes are collected in a single, user-friendly interface, accessible through your organization’s recording library.

Organizations can also create custom channels within this library. For example, you could create a channel just for Town Hall meetings that everyone can access, or a channel of Sales calls that’s only available to teams that need customer insights.

With Fellow, all your meeting information is easily accessible and right where you need it.

4. Extensive integrations

We know that your tech stack works best when apps can talk to each other, and Fellow can do just that.

Fellow integrates with more than 50 tools, including:

• Project management tools like Linear, ClickUp, and Jira

• Communication tools like Slack, Loom, and Confluence

• File sharing tools like Google Drive and Dropbox

• Service desks like Zendesk and Freshworks

• CRMs like Salesforce and HubSpot

Customer-facing teams like Sales and Customer Success will find the CRM integration especially useful. Fellow is able to pull data from Salesforce and HubSpot into our interface and then update both tools based on meeting data. Fellow even uses AI to make suggestions for HubSpot fields.

5. Works with more video conferencing apps

While Gemini’s note taker is limited to Google Meet calls, Fellow works with Google Meet, Zoom, and Microsoft Teams. No matter what app you use for calls — or if you use all three — Fellow can be there to record, take notes, and summarize using AI. And, no matter what video conferencing tool you use, all your recordings will be placed in one centralized library.

6. Pre- and post-meeting support

Fellow isn’t just an AI note taker, it’s an assistant for your entire meeting workflow.

Before a meeting, Fellow generates a collaborative meeting agenda that all attendees can contribute to ahead of time. A meeting agenda ensures that all meetings have a clear purpose and talking points, helping to ensure a productive use of time. Fellow also sends a pre-meeting brief for recurring meetings that summarizes the last call, reminding you what to follow up on.

During meetings, that agenda also acts as a place to take manual meeting notes or assign action items if you choose. Or, let Fellow take care of notes, including noting action items and decisions made.

After, Fellow adds your recording, AI meeting transcript, and meeting notes to your recording library as well as sends a detailed post-meeting recap to attendees. And with Ask Fellow, you can interact with your past meetings like ChatGPT, asking questions and pulling insights across all your transcripts as if you had one searchable brain for your entire meeting history.

7. Multi-language support

While Google Gemini supports less than 10 languages, Fellow supports 99+ languages, including:

• Chinese

• Dutch

• English

• French

• German

• Hindi

• Indonesian

• Italian

• Japanese

• Korean

• Portuguese

• Russian

• Spanish

• Swedish

• Turkish

• Ukrainian

8. Free plan, Solo plan, and low-cost plans

Finally, there’s a lower barrier to entry to use Fellow.

Fellow’s always-free plan includes AI meeting notes, access to our Ask Fellow chatbot, and integrations with Google Meet, Zoom, and Microsoft Teams, and Slack.

Paid plans start at $7 per user per month for small teams. For larger organizations, the Business plan includes unlimited AI for $15 per month and Enterprise plans are $25 per user per month. If you’re a solopreneur, consultant, or coach, Fellow also offers a solo plan for $19 per month with unlimited AI.

Learn more about Fellow’s pricing plans.

Your meetings deserve the most accurate and secure AI meeting assistant

Google Gemini’s “Take Notes for Me” feature does what it says: it can summarize, transcribe, and record your meetings. However, it simply cannot replace the comprehensive value of an AI meeting assistant like Fellow.

Think of it like this: you could manage a project using nothing but a spreadsheet. But, if you really care about operational efficiency, you’d use a purpose-built project management tool to track tickets. The same logic applies here. A purpose-built AI meeting assistant provides the most value for improving meeting etiquette and efficiency across your organization.

With best-in-class security, you can trust that meeting data shared with Fellow is in safe hands. You can also help employees build better meeting habits, all supported by one central, accessible hub.

Looking for a more powerful and accurate AI meeting assistant? Get started with Fellow for free.

Google Gemini AI notes for Google Meet FAQ

Can I use Gemini to record meetings?

Yes, Gemini can be used to record meetings in Google Meet. Simply check the "record this meeting" box.

How does Gemini AI take notes in Google Meet?

Google's Gemini AI takes notes in Google Meet by recording and creating a transcription of your meeting. It then uses that transcription to create a summary of the call.

Is Gemini AI accurate for meeting summaries?

We found Gemini AI to be somewhat accurate for meeting summaries. The summaries are also quite basic.

What’s the best AI notetaker for Google Meet?

The best AI note taker for Google Meet is Fellow, a purpose-built AI meeting assistant. Unlike Gemini, Fellow centralizes your meeting notes, summaries, recordings, and transcripts into a central library. Fellow also integrates with more than 50 other apps and can transcribe in 99+ languages.