Can You Use AI Scribe for Group Therapy Notes?

Which types of group therapy work well with live AI Scribe recording?

A few formats are a natural fit for live recording, mostly because you're doing most of the talking.

• Psychoeducation groups are probably the strongest fit for live recordings. If you're running a session on coping strategies, sleep hygiene, or emotion regulation, AI Scribe can document your content and the session's themes in a way that's super useful.
• Skills-based groups work similarly, a defined agenda and your facilitation as the through-line gives the tool a much easier job making sense of what happened.
• Drop-in or check-in style groups where clients briefly share and you respond can also work well, particularly when your check-ins follow a consistent format from week to week.

Which session types are harder to capture live, and why?

AI scribe tools are built primarily for one-on-one conversations, so the more voices in the room, the harder it has to work. AI transcription with multiple speakers is still catching up, and in a dynamic group where clients are actively talking, overlapping, and responding to each other in real time, the transcript can get a bit messy.

Couples therapy, family therapy,and modalities like art therapy each run into this in different ways too. For couples therapy notes, there's the potential for the output to skew toward one speaker, and that compounds in family sessions with three or more people. And in situations such as art therapy where so much of the work happens non-verbally, an AI scribe can only capture what it can hear.

Oliver Browne, Senior Staff Product Designer on the AI Scribe team at Jane, was candid about this during a recent webinar on how AI Scribe is changing clinic charting: "It's one of those things that we can't say it's going to work 100% of the time, that it's going to split the information well among a group of people."

None of this means using AI Scribe for mental health documentation is off the table in group settings though. It just means live recording probably isn't the right approach.

How should I use an AI scribe if live recording isn't the right fit?

Dictate after the session instead of recording it live

If live recording isn't working for your group sessions, post-session dictation is usually the fix that practitioners come back to. Rather than asking the AI scribe to parse a multi-voice recording, you give it a brain dump of what happened: your clinical observations, key themes, and how individual clients were tracking. Think of it as a voice memo from your own perspective on the session, not a transcript of it. You're not trying to capture everything that was said, just what matters for your group therapy notes.

Use the post-session window between back-to-back clients

You don't have to wait until the end of the day to write out polished session notes. A two or three-minute dictation right after a session ends can capture all the key themes and individual responses while they're still fresh in your mind.

Build a prompt for your specific group types

If you run the same type of group session week over week, take a few minutes to build a prompt around that specific format rather than relying on something like a generic SOAP template. A prompt that reflects how your group actually runs, the terminology you use, and the sections you need in the final notes will give you something much closer to what you'd write yourself.

During an AI Scribe Prompt Workshop, one of Jane's product specialists, Lauren Hetherington, suggested that "You can start with a default template, make small changes, and end up with a prompt that saves time and feels like your own." Practitioners who've gotten the most out of AI scribe tools in more complex settings often point to prompt refinement as the thing that made the biggest difference.

What consent do I need before recording a group therapy session?

In a group setting, every participant needs to consent before you begin recording. If someone isn't comfortable, post-session dictation is a great fallback.

If you're looking for a starting point, this AI scribe consent form post has templates you can download and adjust for your group sessions. And if you're still working out how to bring it up with clients, this guide on talking to clients about AI scribe walks you through that conversation.

Frequently asked questions

Can AI Scribe tell the difference between multiple speakers in a group?

Not always with full reliability, though technology is continuing to improve in this area. AI transcription with multiple speakers is still developing, and right now AI scribes work best with one or two clearly distinguishable voices, in larger group settings, attribution can get a bit challenging. The post-session dictation approach is a great way to continue using an AI scribe to support you in creating documentation for your group appointments while that capability continues to develop.

Does AI Scribe work for couples therapy?

It can, depending on how you use it. For telehealth couples sessions, most AI scribe tools are currently only designed for 1:1 virtual appointments, so a live recording probably isn't the right fit. For in-person couples sessions, it tends to work best when the conversation has some structure to it. A prompt built around your specific approach can get you pretty close to the notes you'd write yourself. When sessions are more fluid and fast-moving between multiple participants, practitioners find that post-session dictation is the better move. Dictating allows them to quickly record all of their clinical observations after the clients leave. Either way, it's worth experimenting with to find what best fits your style.

Does every participant in a group therapy session need to consent to AI Scribe?

Yes, every participant needs to be on board before you hit record. Anyone taking part in your group or couples session should feel like they clearly understand what's being recorded, how it's stored, and that opting out won't affect their care. If one participant declines, the post-session dictation approach (where only your voice is recorded) is usually a great alternative to try instead. When in doubt, have a quick check in with your regulatory body for guidance specific to your region and discipline.

Do I need a special prompt for using an AI scribe in group sessions?

Not necessarily, but a well-built prompt makes a real difference if the default output isn't quite landing. If you run the same group format week over week, a prompt that reflects your structure, your terminology, and the sections you need will produce much better notes than a generic SOAP template. Start with whatever default template your AI scribe tool provides and adjust from there. Most practitioners find it takes one or two sessions of tweaking before it really starts to feel like their own.