Transcribing meetings and audio with AI: what to expect and what to check

AI transcription turns speech into text in minutes and works well as a draft of a meeting, an interview or a voice note. It does not work as final minutes without reading: it gets names, numbers and technical terms wrong, and mixes up who said what when several voices are involved. What makes it accurate or weak is mostly the quality of the audio, not the brand of the tool.

What decides transcription quality

Factor Effect What to do
Noise and echo The number one cause of errors Record close to the speaker, in a room without echo, and close windows and turn off fans.
Several people talking at once Sentences mixed or lost Ask people to speak in turn. If the tool separates speakers, check the attribution.
Accents, mixed languages and local words More errors, especially in less common languages Test with a minute of your own audio before trusting the rest. Tell the tool the language instead of letting it guess.
Proper names, acronyms and technical terms Spelled wrongly or swapped for similar words If the tool accepts a list of terms, give it one. Otherwise correct by hand.
Numbers, dates and amounts The errors that cost most Always check against the audio, never against memory.

A safe method, step by step

1 Ask permission to record. Say at the start of the meeting that it will be recorded and transcribed. Rules on recording people vary from country to country; when in doubt, get written consent.
2 Decide where the audio goes. Cloud services send the recording to a provider; some programs transcribe on your own computer. For confidential conversations, see the data terms or use a local model (running a model on your own computer).
3 Record with care. Do a thirty-second test and listen to it before starting for real.
4 Ask for the transcript, then the summary. In two stages: the summary starts from the corrected text, not from the raw audio.
5 Check names, numbers and decisions in the text. See how to check an answer: a summary can also invent.
6 Keep and delete. Decide how long you keep the recording and who can open it; delete what you no longer need.
A transcript is not proof. If the text will support a decision, a contract or a dispute, listen to the original audio at that point. And do not send anyone the transcript as if it were the official minutes without reviewing it.
For a useful summary, ask for: decisions made, tasks with an owner and a deadline (only those actually said), and open questions. Tell the AI to write “not stated” where information is missing, instead of filling the gap.

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SEE ALSO

Running an AI model on your own computer with Ollama or LM Studio

What happens to what you type into an AI service: reading the data terms

AI hallucinations: how to check an answer before you use it

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