Why create an AI meeting assistant?
Today, AI meeting note takers, such as Fireflies and Fathom, are expected to participate in meetings to record conversations, generate transcripts, and deliver summaries. More recently, desktop apps like Granola have gained popularity by allowing users to record meetings without a bot. The popularity of desktop applications has led teams to create their own. AI Granola Alternatives.
Since the expectation now is to record a meeting, the differentiation comes from what happens after the meeting, not the recording form factor itself. This is where AI meeting assistants come in: understanding context, automating workflows, and turning conversations into meaningful outcomes beyond summarizing meetings.
Infrastructure needed to build an AI meeting assistant
Most teams building AI meeting assistants use Recall.ai for their meeting recording infrastructure. Recall.ai is an affordable tool that helps developers get to market faster by removing the complexity of building and maintaining a reliable meeting recording infrastructure across platforms and systems.
At a high level, the following infrastructure is required to build an AI meeting assistant:
- Cross-platform meeting discovery and joining infrastructure across all meeting platforms
- Meeting recording infrastructure for each meeting platform
- Extract structured data from captured meeting data
- Pipeline to channel meeting data into LLM prompts/workflows
- Any infrastructure for the product facing the end user.
Developers who build with Recall.ai get structured meeting data out of the box and can focus on creating differentiated AI products.
For developers who choose to build their own capture solution, they must integrate with meeting platform APIs, including Google Meetings APIMicrosoft Graph API and Zoom Recording API (Zoom RTMS or Recording API) or create a desktop meeting recording app.
Managing the integration of multiple meeting platforms is difficult because each platform has different rules for recording meetings. Most developers rely on meeting bot APIs and desktop recording SDKs/APIs to create a more consistent way to capture meeting data.
Creating a desktop meeting recorder from scratch requires capture screen content, access system audio and record microphone audio reliably across all operating systems and devices. Abstracting this complexity is one of the many reasons developers choose to build with Recall.ai.
Recall.ai gives you flexibility with meeting recording
Using a provider like Recall.ai not only eliminates the complexity that comes with creating meeting infrastructure, but also gives you the flexibility to choose between two form factors for meeting recording.
| Meeting Robot API | Desktop Recording SDK | Building a desktop app/meeting bot internally | Native APIs | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Join meetings on all platforms | Yeah | Yeah | depends | No |
| Bot is present at the meeting. | Yeah | No | No | No |
| End user must download a desktop application | No | Yeah | depends | No |
| Requires maintenance | No | No | Yeah | Yeah |
| Time to market | Days | Days | Months | Months |
Whether you use a Microsoft Teams bot for recording meetings or a desktop recorder to record a Slack meeting, developers using a meeting bot API or desktop recording SDK get structured meeting data as transcripts with speaker tags, audio streams with diarization and rich meeting metadata.
Structured meeting data is absolutely crucial for AI meeting attendees. To accurately generate summaries, action items, and draft follow-up emails, an AI meeting assistant needs to know who said what and when they said it. Having a meeting context allows developers to skip organizing and processing raw meeting data and speed up the creation of subsequent workflows.
Because Recall.ai offers all of this functionality out of the box, developers can put an AI meeting assistant into production in a matter of days.
Getting started with Recall.ai
To get started with Recall.ai, you need to register on a free accountget an API key and region.
Meeting Robot API
To send a bot to a meeting, you can use this endpoint:
curl -X POST https://$RECALLAI_REGION.recall.ai/api/v1/bot \
-H 'Authorization: Token $RECALLAI_API_KEY' \
-H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
-d '
{
"meeting_url": "$MEETING_URL",
"bot_name": "My Bot",
"recording_config": {"transcript": {"provider": {"recallai_streaming": {}}}}
}'The response will include a bot ID. After the meeting ends, you can recover meeting items, such as transcripts and video recordings, using this command:
curl -X GET https://$RECALLAI_REGION.recall.ai/api/v1/bot/$BOT_ID \
-H 'Authorization: Token $RECALLAI_API_KEY'Desktop Recording SDK
You can try one of sample applications to see how the Desktop Recording SDK works.
Once you’re ready to integrate the Desktop Recording SDK into your own application, install the SDK:
npm install @recallai/desktop-sdkTo initialize the Desktop Recording SDK, add these lines of code:
const RecallAiSdk = require('@recallai/desktop-sdk');
await RecallAiSdk.init({
apiUrl: RECALLAI_REGION
});
RecallAiSdk.addEventListener("permissions-granted", async (evt) => {
});
RecallAiSdk.addEventListener("meeting-detected", async (evt) => {
const { window } = evt;
});With these lines of code, your app can automatically detect meetings and record them once they start. If you want to access other meeting artifacts, additional configuration is required.
Opportunities in the AI meeting assistant ecosystem
AI meeting assistants are not just meeting summary tools. They can solve many problems in different verticals. The more specific the use case, the more value you can offer to the end user. Here are some of the most popular situations where an AI meeting assistant can help:
Productivity
You’re a founder who just had a series of coffee talks today with investors and clients. You should schedule follow-up meetings and send emails with next steps after the meeting is over.
Your AI meeting assistant uses notes from your AI Scorer and compose follow-up emails and meeting invitations so you only have to review and approve them.
Sales
You are an account executive on a call with a prospect asking you specific questions about a technical feature. Although you will set up a meeting between the prospect and an engineer on the team, the prospect has some immediate questions.
Your AI meeting assistant helps you Get answers to potential customers’ questions in real time searching your engineering documentation and displaying relevant information during the call, allowing you to quickly confirm if a feature is supported.
Hiring
You are a recruiter and you need to meet with 10 candidates today. Each call lasts 45 minutes. After each call, you should summarize the meetings, assign a score to each candidate, and update your recruiting database.
Your AI meeting assistant generates a summary, extracts key information from candidates and automates interview dashboardssaving recruiters hours of manual work each week and allowing them to move qualified candidates through the interview process more efficiently.
Project management
You are a product manager in a meeting discussing work that needs to be completed by the end of the week. Several tickets were added last minute and the team is discussing priorities and individual bandwidth.
Your AI meeting assistants automatically create and assign issues and notify owners based on what was discussed in the meeting so teams can focus on execution rather than delegation.
health care
You are a psychiatrist who sees more than 5 clients in a day. After each session, you should document the conversation, track the patient’s progress, and enter information into the EHR.
Your AI meeting assistants update patient records and extract relevant information so psychiatrists can spend less time on documentation and more time focusing on patient care.
Frequently asked questions about creating an AI meeting assistant
What is an AI meeting assistant?
An AI meeting assistant captures and understands meeting conversations and then takes action based on the context of what was discussed. Beyond transcribe meetingscan extract information, identify action items, generate summaries, and trigger subsequent workflows in other systems.
How do you choose an AI meeting assistant?
The right AI meeting assistant depends on your industry and use case. Some teams need sales intelligence and CRM automation, while others need documentation, customer insights, or Compliance Recording API. You’ll also want to consider whether you prefer a solution that uses a meeting bot that joins a call or a desktop recording solution.
Why should you create your own AI meeting assistant?
Building your own AI meeting assistant makes sense when the tools available on the market don’t meet your requirements or if you are developing a product that doesn’t exist for a specific industry or workflow.
What are the common problems you will encounter when creating your own AI meeting assistant?
The main challenge you’ll encounter when creating your own AI meeting assistant is reliably capturing meeting data. Whether you’re building a desktop meeting recorder or a meeting bot, meeting capture infrastructure is more complex than it initially appears. Developers must consider countless edge cases, maintain compatibility with changes in meeting platforms and operating systems, and ensure reliability across a large number of concurrent meetings. As a result, building and maintaining meeting capture infrastructure requires more engineering effort than expected.
How do you build an AI meeting assistant?
An AI meeting assistant consists of two main components: meeting capture infrastructure and downstream AI workflows. First, you need a reliable way to record meetings on platforms like Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams. Building the meeting capture infrastructure is the most challenging part of the process. Many teams use Recall.ai so they can focus on creating differentiated AI experiences instead of building and maintaining meeting capture infrastructure.
Is Recall.ai free?
You can sign up for a free account and start building right away. Recall.ai offers pay-as-you-go pricing and is designed to remain affordable for startups, independent developers, and growing businesses.
What form factors does Recall.ai provide?
Recall.ai supports both meeting robots and desktop-based recording. Developers can use the Meeting Bot API to implement bots that join calls, or the Desktop Recording SDK for applications that capture meetings without adding a participant to the call.
Why should we trust Recall.ai?
Recall.ai is the most reliable option on the market with over 99.9% reliability. Trusted by Fortune 500 companies and leading AI startups, including Click aboveReturn circle and memory to create production-quality products from meeting data.
Source link
