Transcription software company
Otter.ai, Inc. is a Mountain View, California-based technology company that develops speech to text transcription applications using artificial intelligence and machine learning. Its software, called Otter, shows captions for live speakers, and generates written transcriptions of speech.[1]
History
Otter.ai was founded as AISense in 2016 by Sam Liang and Yun Fu, two computer science engineers with a long history of working with artificial intelligence.[2][3]
In January 2018, the company announced a partnership with Zoom Video Communications to transcribe video meetings post-conference.[4] In March, the company debuted its first Otter speech translation app at Mobile World Congress.[4] It was available for free for Google's Android and Apple's mobile products.[1] In October, the company launched Otter for Education, a note taking tool designed for college students.[5]
In March 2019, the company launched Otter for Teams, a transcription and storage product for enterprises.[6]
In January 2020, now doing business as Otter.ai, the company announced another US$10M funding round, led by Japanese mobile phone operator NTT Docomo's Docomo Ventures.[7] In April, the company announced it was offering Live Notes for Zoom calls.[8]
Technology
To develop its speech transcription technology, the company says it combined deep machine learning using millions of hours of audio recordings, which were analyzed to train the software and improve the transcription capabilities. The company says that it uses proprietary algorithms to scour the web for these usable audio segments.[9][10]
In March 2018, technology news site ZDNet reported concerns about Otter's privacy policy, noting that the company could access uploaded recordings and transcriptions. In response the company updated the policy and stated that only the company's chief technology officer would allow access to transcriptions, in response to a "legitimate user request".[11] In 2022, Politico highlighted concerns about the privacy practices of Otter after the company queried a journalist about the purpose of a meeting, transcribed through Otter, with a Uyghur activist.[12]
OtterPilot
In February 2023, Otter.ai launched an AI meeting assistant called OtterPilot, available to all users, which automates meetings, with an AI-generated summary of key meeting topics, automated capture of images of slides shared during virtual meetings, and real-time meeting notes that can be shared and collaborated on. OtterPilot includes Otter Assistant, which can automatically join meetings on a user's calendar and transcribe conversations.[13]
Reception
Digital media website Mashable and technology publication Fast Company named Otter one of the best apps of 2018.[14][15]
