Granola Launches Heads Up Feature to Alert Meeting Participants About AI Note-Taking.

Granola has released Heads Up, an experimental feature designed to inform meeting participants that AI note-taking is in use before they join a Google Meet call. The feature, launched in Granola's Labs section on December 22, addresses a common friction point for AI meeting assistants: transparency and consent.

Heads Up works through Granola's Google Calendar add-on. When enabled, it presumably adds a notice to calendar invitations or meeting details, giving attendees advance warning that the host will be using Granola to capture and enhance meeting notes. Users can access the feature by navigating to Granola Settings and activating it under the Labs section.

The feature arrives as AI meeting tools face increasing scrutiny around consent and privacy. Unlike bot-based solutions that join calls as visible participants, Granola runs locally on a user's device, capturing audio without sending a bot into the meeting room. This design offers privacy advantages but can create uncertainty for other attendees who may not realize they're being recorded.

By proactively notifying participants, Heads Up gives users a way to maintain transparency without abandoning the tool's core appeal. It's a practical middle ground: the efficiency of local AI note-taking with the courtesy of advance notice.

Granola positions Heads Up as an experimental feature, consistent with the company's approach to iterating in public. The Labs designation signals that the feature may evolve based on user feedback or usage patterns.

The company has been expanding its feature set steadily. Recent additions include custom jargon support for technical vocabularies, checklist functionality for action items, and HeyGen integration for turning notes into videos. Heads Up represents a different kind of enhancement, one focused on social dynamics rather than technical capability.

The feature currently supports Google Meet through the Calendar add-on. No indication yet whether similar functionality will extend to other platforms Granola supports, though the Calendar-based approach could theoretically work across meeting tools.

Granola has seen organic growth among teams managing heavy meeting schedules, with companies like Vercel's GTM team adopting it across departments. The tool competes in a crowded space that includes bot-based recorders and other local AI assistants, but its privacy-first architecture and lightweight integration differentiate it.

Heads Up is available now for all Granola users who enable it in Settings. The company has not announced whether the feature will remain optional or eventually become a default behavior.