🤔 What is Read AI?
Read AI describes itself as an "AI copilot" for your meetings, emails, and messages — and that's not just fancy marketing talk. It's designed to automatically join your virtual calls on Zoom, Google Meet, or Microsoft Teams, record everything, and turn those conversations into clear, structured summaries.
Essentially, it takes the chaos of daily meetings and transforms it into a searchable, organized library of insights and action items — no more scrambling through notes or trying to remember who said what.
Read AI uses natural language processing and speaker recognition to transcribe speech, summarize discussions, and understand context across multiple languages (up to 16, in fact). What really makes it stand out is how it fits into the broader trend of AI meeting copilots — tools that don't just take notes, but actually understand tone, identify key moments, and help professionals collaborate faster.
🔗 Workplace Platform Integrations
Teams often use multiple tools to communicate, manage tasks, and store information, which can make it difficult to keep meeting outcomes organized across platforms. Read AI provides a way to capture meeting notes, summaries, and follow-up items and send them into the systems a team already works in.
Supported Platforms
🎥 Video Conferencing
- Zoom: Automatically summarizes and transcribes calls
- Google Meet: Captures meetings with zero extra steps
- Microsoft Teams: Sends recaps into Teams channels
💬 Messaging & Collaboration
- Slack: Meeting summaries sent to channels/DMs
- Asana: Converts decisions into actionable tasks
- Jira: Follow-up items become trackable tickets
- Notion: Structured notes in databases
🚀 Key Features of Read AI
Real-time Transcription and Recording
When it comes to meeting reports, transcription is an excellent tool. After each call, the platform delivers a complete transcript that clearly shows who said what — complete with speaker labels, timestamps, and even quick summaries of each conversation. You can jump to specific sections of the transcript and instantly replay that exact moment in the video recording.
⚡ Processing Time: Typically 5-30 minutes depending on meeting length
Meeting Summaries
Read AI's meeting summaries strike an outstanding balance between brevity and usefulness. After each virtual meeting, it automatically produces a clean, structured overview that captures the essence of the conversation — complete with chapters, action items, and follow-up questions.
Collaboration Tools
Read AI makes collaboration effortless by integrating directly with popular productivity platforms like Asana, Confluence, Jira, Google Drive, OneDrive, and Notion. These integrations bridge the gap between meeting discussions and actionable work.
Project Management
- Asana tasks with assignees & dates
- Jira tickets from action items
- Confluence documentation
File Storage
- Google Drive integration
- Microsoft OneDrive support
- Notion database connections
Search Copilot
Read AI's Search Copilot is like a universal search engine for everything you've ever said or shared across your digital workspace. It scans meetings, messages, emails, and documents to deliver quick, context-aware answers — not just search results.
💬 Example Query: "What did we decide in the last marketing sync?"
→ Get summarized insights, citations, and direct links
Powered by Read's Free Agent technology and integrates with Premium models like GPT-4.1 and Claude for deeper reasoning.
Smart Scheduler
Takes the pain out of setting up meetings with personalized scheduling links that sync with Google Calendar and Outlook.
Personalized Coaching
Speaker Coach analyzes your communication style across Clarity, Inclusion, and Impact with actionable insights from real meeting data.
Meeting Recommendations
Read AI's Meeting Recommendations feature is built to make every meeting more innovative, shorter, and more productive. It automatically analyzes engagement, sentiment, and participation metrics across your calls to suggest actionable improvements.
⏱️ Time Savings: Up to 23 hours per month reclaimed through smarter meeting management
The tool goes beyond generic advice by offering participant-level recommendations, showing why a change is suggested, and allowing you to take action directly from your calendar. Integrated with Google Calendar via the Smart Scheduler Chrome extension.
Manual Uploads
Read AI's File Upload feature is designed for anyone who wants to analyze and summarize meetings without needing a live recording. You can upload pre-recorded audio or video files, and the platform automatically transforms them into detailed, AI-generated reports.
Pricing for File Uploads
- Included in paid plans with monthly upload credits
- On-demand: $0.04 per minute (200-minute minimum)
Pros and Cons
Pros
- Excellent Meeting Summaries: Concise, structured summaries with chapters, action items, and key questions — perfect for quick reviews
- User-Friendly Interface: Clean layout and easy navigation, simple to find past meetings or replay key moments
- Engagement & Sentiment Analytics: Unique metrics like talk time, sentiment trends, and engagement insights for business leaders
- Strong Integrations: Works with Google Calendar, Outlook, Zoom, and Teams, automatically joining meetings
- AI Copilot & Automation: Saves time by automatically generating notes, highlights, and summaries
Cons
- Limited Search Capabilities: Users report that searching past meetings is cumbersome, with poor filtering and relevance
- Overcomplicated Features: Some features, like Gmail summarization, feel unnecessary or underdeveloped
- Restrictive Pricing Tiers: Advanced options like meeting playback are only available on expensive Enterprise plans
- Inconsistent Integrations: Occasional syncing issues with Outlook or multi-calendar setups
- Privacy & Transparency Concerns: Automatically joins meetings and records without clear consent, creating trust issues
Read AI Alternatives
1. Bluedot
Key Features: Bot-free AI meeting note-taker that records, transcribes, and summarizes meetings across platforms without joining the call. Supports 100+ languages, automatically syncs with CRM tools and Notion, GDPR-compliant with full encryption.
Pricing: Free (5 meetings), Basic (~$14/month), Pro (~$20/month), Business (~$32/month) - View Pricing
Rating: 4.0/5 TrustScore - Privacy-first approach, non-intrusive design
2. Otter.ai
Key Features: Real-time transcription for meetings, interviews, and lectures with speaker identification, shareable transcripts, AI-generated summaries with action items, integrates with Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams.
Pricing: Free (Basic), Pro (~$8.33/month annual), Business (~$20/month), Enterprise (Custom)
Rating: 3.5/5 TrustScore - Accurate transcription, user-friendly interface, occasional errors
3. Fireflies
Key Features: Automatic meeting recording, transcription, and AI-powered summaries across platforms. Smart search, talk-time & sentiment analytics, "soundbite" clips for key moments, deep CRM integrations.
Pricing: Free, Pro (~$10-18/month), Business (~$19-29/month), Enterprise (~$39/month)
Rating: 4.5/5 TrustScore - Strong transcription capabilities, good team collaboration
4. Fathom AI
Key Features: AI-powered meeting assistant that automatically records, transcribes, and summarizes virtual meetings. Instant call summaries, searchable transcripts, shareable clips, CRM integrations, team collaboration tools.
Pricing: Free (unlimited recordings), Premium ($16/month), Team ($14/month), Business ($20/month)
Rating: 4.8/5 TrustScore - Most reliable free AI note-taking tool for professionals
Overall Experience
After testing Read AI across multiple meetings, it's clear that the tool stands out for its robust transcription and summarization capabilities. The AI delivers detailed meeting notes with speaker identification, timestamps, and quick summaries, making it easy to revisit key points without rewatching entire sessions.
Read AI also excels at collaboration and workflow integration. It integrates with primary tools such as Asana, Jira, Notion, and Slack, allowing users to push meeting notes, action items, and summaries directly into existing workspaces. For teams managing multiple projects and communication channels, this seamless integration streamlines coordination and follow-up.
However, the platform isn't without its flaws...
Many users have expressed privacy and transparency concerns, reporting that the app automatically joins calls even after being removed. The University of Washington officially deactivated Read AI due to unauthorized participation in meetings and data risks.
Additionally, users mention slow support responses and unclear billing policies, which hurt the platform's credibility despite its strong functionality.
Final Verdict
Read AI delivers impressive meeting intelligence tools and analytics, but struggles with user trust and reliability. It's an excellent choice for organizations that prioritize insights and productivity, but individuals or institutions sensitive to privacy may find its automation intrusive.
Trustpilot: 1.5/5 stars
Privacy concerns, billing issues
Microsoft AppSource: 4.0/5 stars
Strong Teams integration, functionality
Read AI Pricing
These plans scale with how much you meet and collaborate. The Free plan is great for getting started. Pro is ideal once you need unlimited transcripts and stronger integrations. Enterprise adds video playback and team features, while Enterprise+ offers advanced security and compliance for larger organizations.
Free
- 5 transcripts/month
- Basic summaries & search
- Basic integrations
- iOS app
Pro
- Unlimited transcripts
- Advanced summaries & search
- Premium integrations
- 100 file uploads/month
Enterprise
- Audio + video playback
- Video highlights
- 200 file uploads/month
- Premium support
Enterprise+
- HIPAA, SSO & admin controls
- 300 file uploads/month
- Custom data retention
- Advanced security
User Reviews & Reception
Mixed User Reviews
Read AI has received mixed reviews across platforms, reflecting a combination of strong functionality and significant user frustrations.
Trustpilot: 1.5/5 stars (77 reviews)
- Billing issues and poor support
- Privacy and data access concerns
- Automatically joins calls without permission
- Acts like "spyware or malware" - Trustpilot Review
Microsoft AppSource: 4.0/5 stars (118 reviews)
- Seamless Teams integration
- Efficient meeting management
- Good collaboration features
- Works well in Microsoft ecosystem
University of Washington Deactivates Read AI
The University of Washington officially deactivated Read AI because the app was joining virtual meetings without users' explicit consent and recording conversations automatically. According to the university's IT department, this behavior posed serious privacy and data-security risks.
Source: UW IT Security Guidelines
Frustrated User Experience
"Can someone tell me how to remove Read.ai from joining my calls automatically? It's really frustrating — this thing keeps entering my calls even though I completely removed my Read.ai account."
Positive User Experience
"I've been using Read AI for almost a year and, despite the criticism, found it reliable. I verified its SOC 2 Type 2 security audit and as an AI copilot and note-taking tool, I'd have trouble living without it."