Best AI Tools for Notes
Note-taking can be a tedious task, even though some of you (we) have mastered it by now.
Ever since we were in college, we had to learn to distinguish between what’s important and what doesn’t have to be included in our notes.
Today, modern technology — powered by AI — can do many of these things on our behalf, taking notes while we sit and listen. What’s more, the same technology can also make sense out of those notes, automatically turning them into actionable items and more.
Here are some of the best AI tools for (taking) notes:
Notion AI by Notion
👍 Pros
👎 Cons
- Super easy to setup
- Works across all your notes, docs & projects
- Easy drag & drop text editor
- It can take a while for it to understand your tasks
- It can be difficult to use for complex tasks
An AI service of the popular note-taking service, Notion AI is promoted as “your ultra-capable teammate” that will summarize what’s important and actionable. And because it’s integrated within Notion, there is no need to jump back and forth between your notes and a separate AI app.
According to Notion, this combination will help users quickly fix spelling & grammar, translate texts, edit the tone of their writing, make it shorter or longer, better explain stuff — and even get new ideas for their writing.
Also worth noting is Notion’s unique and highly flexible drag-and-drop text editor, which allows users to rearrange and transform any AI-generated content easily.
Otter.ai
👍 Pros
👎 Cons
- Saves a ton of time on transcribing recorded files and live meetings
- Works in the web browser and on mobile devices
- Transcription editing and team collaboration tools are handy
- Only for English speakers
Otter.ai is designed to simplify your life by transcribing or taking notes from voice conversations. As such, it is perfect for meetings, interviews, or even when you’re driving. With Otter, you can easily convert these voice conversations into searchable notes with the ability to add photos within your transcripts.
The tool has many functionalities, and it works both in your web browser and on your mobile phone. For instance, you can share your conversations with others and allow them to edit, comment, or simply view the conversation. You can also review and edit your conversations, which can be handy for catching up on details you might have missed.
Imports and exports are also available with support for various audio and video formats for transcription. Then, once your conversations are transcribed, you can easily export the text and audio and even organize these files in different folders.
Regarding integrations, Otter.ai can sing along with all the “usual suspects” — including Google Calendar & Contacts, Microsoft Calendar & Contacts, Dropbox, and Zoom, among others.
The service is available in a few different plans, and the neat thing is that you can try it for free — and only sign-up for a paid plan, if you determine Otter.ai will work for you.
Notedly by Syntak, LLC
👍 Pros
👎 Cons
- An indispensable tool for students
- Also for everyone else who needs to read large texts regularly
- Great for understanding complex subjects
- A browser extension would be useful
Notedly is an online tool that summarizes any textbook chapter or news article in a flash, leaving you with more time to do other things.
Beyond textbooks and articles, it can also “handle” philosophy papers, scientific publications, and any other text that you may struggle to comprehend easily.
We should add that textbooks are the main “target” of Notedly. It has been designed as a tool for students who are getting twenty-page papers assigned to them every class. It’s for students who need to read a new textbook chapter every few days. It’s even for students who need to pore over dozens of documents for a research paper.
All you need to do is submit your assigned readings and let Notedly auto-generate a page of notes for you. So whether you need to understand a paper from JSTOR, write a quick paragraph reflecting on a passage, or just get the main points from news articles, Notedly will have your back.
As they like to put it – wave goodbye to last-minute reading stress now that you have an AI sidekick.
ClickUp AI
👍 Pros
👎 Cons
- Project management on steroids and then some
- What used to take 30 minutes now takes 30 seconds
- Works for different kinds of roles in your company
- You have to pay more to use ClickUp AI
The all-in-one project management service ClickUp has its own AI tool that aims to help users get their work done faster.
It does that by providing users with relevant tools for different roles. For instance, you can use it for sales, marketing, customer support, project management, product & engineering.
Whichever role you’re in, you will be able to use AI to summarize long text and write faster. Much faster. As ClickUp says, what used to take 30 minutes – now takes 30 seconds.
Have writer’s block, and you need to prepare an article for Medium? No problem; let AI spark your creativity by generating the full page from the title you provide. It can do the same with ads and other written material, and at the end – make it look professional with your company’s header.
The best part is that ClickUp made sure access to AI is available throughout its platform. So wherever you are in ClickUp, AI assistance is just a click away. Love it.
Fireflies by Fireflies.ai Corp
👍 Pros
👎 Cons
- Helps with transcriptions & note-taking
- Integrates with various software
- The soundbites feature is particularly handy
- The free version is rather limited
- The transcript accuracy can be improved
Fireflies uses generative AI to bring ChatGPT to meetings, helping you record, transcribe, search, and analyze voice conversations. The service works with popular video-conferencing apps — including Google Meet, Zoom, Teams, Webex, Ringcentral, Aircallm, etc. It can also work with dialers and audio files to create transcripts in minutes.
After the meeting, there is the option to use an AI-powered search to review what has been said in 5 minutes. Fireflies will highlight action items, tasks, questions, and other key metrics — and all you to filter and listen to key topics discussed.
In addition, it also supports multiple users, so that your team can add comments, pin and react to specific parts of conversations; as well as create soundbites and share the most memorable moments from meetings.
Fireflies is used by over 100,000 organizations, including the likes of Netflix, Nike, Uber, Expedia, Delta Airlines, and more.
How can AI help you take better notes?
The first thing you should know is that AI can listen and take notes on your behalf in multiple languages. That’s right, this isn’t an English-only thing and will work across countries and cultures. Here’s what these tools can do for you:
-
Automatic note-taking
There are meetings and then there are “meetings,” which only require your physical presence yet seldom lead to any action. In such instances, you can let the AI listen in for you and take notes. Later on, you can go through these notes and see whether something useful has been said or not.
-
Summaries
AI can also produce meeting summaries for you, allowing you to get a quick grasp of what was said at the time. This can come in particularly handy for folks who attend a dozen meetings per week and have to remember what was said at which meeting.
-
Action points
Beyond summaries, there are AI tools that will also produce action points for meetings that actually have these. We would love to attend more such meetings, but it’s the human beings we’re dealing with, and more often than not, even our meetings lead nowhere (though we try to fix that).
-
Online meetings 2.0
Modern AI tools have pretty much changed the way we do online meetings. Because of their capability to automatically capture who said what, they lead to increased accountability and (hopefully) productivity. They also produce the mentioned summaries and action points.
-
Students love it, too
It’s not just professionals benefiting from AI-powered note-taking tools – students love them, too. Instead of scribbling notes during the class, AI can capture the professor’s every word and make it easy to access at a later date. Unfortunately, this wasn’t available when we were in school.
-
Collaboration
Finally, because of its ability to turn voice into text and then produce summaries and action points, many AI tools also include the option to share this information with coworkers and colleagues. This effectively enables collaboration around meeting notes. Pretty cool.
As you’ve seen, AI is changing note-taking for good, turning it into a seamless process you don’t even have to think about anymore. And we love it for that.