AI note-taking tools like Otter, Fireflies or the assistants built into video platforms have rightly become established in everyday team work: they transcribe calls, summarise, save time. So the question suggests itself whether to let them run along in board meetings too. Our answer: for boards, these are the wrong tools. Not because they are bad - boards are simply held to different standards.
1. Confidentiality and data location
Board meetings deal with the most confidential things a company has: strategy, personnel, M&A, numbers before publication. Generic meeting tools typically process recordings in foreign clouds, and depending on the vendor and the chosen settings, content may also be used to improve the models. For a team stand-up, that risk may be acceptable - for a board with confidentiality duties, it generally is not. The standard should be: Swiss or clearly regulated data location, no use of content for model training, and a vendor that understands governance requirements.
2. Minutes are not a transcript
What note-taking tools deliver are conversation notes. What a board needs are minutes within the meaning of Art. 713 of the Swiss Code of Obligations: structured by agenda items, with precisely recorded resolutions, responsibilities and, at the end, two signatures. With generic tools, the path from raw note to legally sound document remains manual work - so the actual time sink is not solved at all. What counts legally and how usable minutes are structured is covered in Board minutes and Art. 713 CO.
AI minutes that generate a structured draft in the right format directly from the recording, the agenda and the organisation's context start one level higher: editing instead of typing.
3. Swiss meeting reality
In Swiss boardrooms, Swiss German and High German alternate, often mid-sentence, with French or English interjections mixed in. Generic transcription is rarely built for that. A live recording designed for this meeting reality makes the difference between a usable draft and an error hunt.
4. Who actually sees the recording?
In a team tool, the recording lands with the organiser and is shared via link. On a board, that is precisely the wrong answer: recording, transcript and minutes are as confidential as the meeting itself and belong under the same access control as all meeting documents - including the question of what an AI search answers to whom. How knowledge from meetings becomes usable without losing control is shown in the walkthrough AI search for boards.
Conclusion
The question is not whether AI belongs in board work - it is already there, and the efficiency gain is real. The question is whether the tool was built for the context: confidentiality, Swiss data location, minutes instead of notes, rights instead of links. The complete journey from recording to signed minutes is shown in this walkthrough.