Professional innovation drives evolution. With Otter and GenAI, the meeting experience is being dramatically reshaped.
Otter, the AI-powered meeting assistant for real-time audio transcription, is adding another layer of AI to its product with today’s introduction of Meeting GenAI, a new set of AI tools for meetings. Included with GenAI is an AI conversationalist that you can ask for information about past meetings you’ve recorded with Otter, an AI chat feature that can be used by teams, and an AI conversation summary set that provides an overview of the meeting that took place so you don’t have to read the full transcript to get the gist.
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While journalists and students might use AI to record things like interviews or lectures, Otter's new AI features are more aimed at those who use the meeting assistant in a corporate environment. The company envisions the new tools as a complement or replacement for AI features offered by services like Microsoft Copilot, Zoom AI Companion , and Google Duet, for example.
Otter CEO Sam Liang explains that the idea to introduce the new AI tools was inspired by his very busy schedule.
“I literally have 30 — sometimes more than 30 — meetings every week. Sometimes I’m even double-closed. I couldn’t attend two or three meetings at once, but my OtterPilot would connect to those meetings on my behalf,” he says, referring to Otter’s feature that allows an artificial conversationalist to record a meeting for you to review later.
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Now, users will be able to read an AI-generated summary of what was covered in that meeting, including a paragraph followed by a list of action items. Otter customers can now also interact with an AI conversationalist, where they can ask questions about what happened in the previous meeting or others.
For example, you could ask the AI things like “What did the CMO say?” or “Did they change the launch date?”
While Liang admits that Otter isn't the first to offer an artificial companion for meetings — Microsoft Copilot and Zoom also have AI features — he believes Otter's version is more powerful and more cohesive.
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“You can use AI chat to query your entire meeting history,” he explains. This means you can go back to ask questions about previous meetings, not just the one you’re assigning.
Another feature offers an artificial conversationalist that integrates into Otter channels where group conversations take place. Here, the bot interacts like any other conversation with another participant and can be activated by anyone asking Otter a question. For example, as users are chatting with each other, they can pause to ask the artificial conversationalist a question, such as “Hey Otter, how much is our revenue?” The artificial conversationalist will answer your question.
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The ultimate goal is for Otter to be more proactive, offering suggestions when it thinks it can offer something useful, analyzing what’s being discussed. Perhaps if a colleague didn’t know the answer to a question, Otter could one day respond by looking through the company’s meeting history and finding the answer that’s been shared elsewhere.
datais stored in the cloud and protected, similar to other cloud-based services like Dropbox or Google's Gmail, but no one authorized by the company will have access to the meeting data. This allows people to access Otter, including its AI features, from any device, including their laptop or smartphone. Additionally, Otter does not use its customers' data to train its AI, although it does allow individual users to contribute their recordings based on their choice.
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Importantly, the company does not intend to charge for its new AI features. While Microsoft charges $360 per year for Copilot in Office 365 and Teams, Otter's GenAI will be included in both the free plan and the $20 per month business plan.
Information source: techcrunch.com
