What is Otter AI?
Otter AI is an AI-powered transcription and meeting-notes app that turns spoken conversations into searchable, timestamped text in real time. It records live talks, imports audio and video files, and auto-joins Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams to produce transcripts, speaker labels, summaries, and action items. It's made by AISense Inc., founded in 2016.
Why — the first-principles explanation
At its core, Otter is a speech-to-text engine wrapped in a productivity app. Sound from a meeting is fed into a neural network trained on huge amounts of transcribed speech, which converts the audio into words. Because it does this while you talk, you get a live, scrolling transcript rather than waiting until the end.
What makes Otter more than a plain transcriber is the layer on top of the text. Once your conversation is text, software can time-stamp every word to the audio, separate and label different speakers, let you search across all your meetings, and feed the transcript to a language model that writes a short summary with action items. Text is easy for computers to organize; audio is not, so converting speech to text unlocks all of that.
The third piece is automation through calendar integration. By connecting to your Google or Microsoft calendar, Otter's Notetaker bot can join your online meetings on its own, so the notes appear without you lifting a finger. Together these make Otter a hands-off assistant: it listens, writes, organizes, and summarizes, and it's built by AISense Inc., a Mountain View company founded in 2016 by Sam Liang and Yun Fu.
An example that makes it click
Imagine a tireless assistant who sits in every meeting, types every word said, writes each speaker's name in the margin, and then hands you a one-paragraph summary with a to-do list. You can later type 'budget' and instantly jump to the exact 12 seconds where the budget was discussed. That assistant is Otter, except it's software that also walks itself into your Zoom calls.
Key facts
- Otter AI is a transcription and meeting-notes app that converts speech to searchable, timestamped text in real time.
- It supports live recording, importing audio/video files, and auto-joining Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams.
- It generates speaker-labeled transcripts, automatic summaries, and action items you can search and share.
- It's made by AISense Inc. (dba Otter.ai), founded in 2016 by Sam Liang and Yun Fu in Mountain View, California.
- A free Basic plan offers 300 minutes per month, with paid Pro, Business, and Enterprise tiers adding more.
Live meeting transcription, notes, and summaries.
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What is Otter AI? It's an app that turns talking into text. At its heart is a speech-recognition engine: it listens to a conversation and writes down what's said, live, as it happens. But Otter does more than type. Once your words are text, it time-stamps every one to the audio, labels who said what, lets you search across all your meetings, and even writes a short summary with action items. You can record a live chat in the app, upload a recording you already have, or connect your calendar so Otter's Notetaker bot joins your Zoom, Google Meet, and Teams calls automatically and takes notes for you. It's made by AISense, a California company founded in 2016. There's a free plan with 300 minutes a month, plus paid tiers for people who need more. In short: Otter is a hands-off note-taker powered by AI.
What authoritative sources say
People also ask
Is Otter AI just a voice recorder?
No. It records audio but its main job is converting speech to searchable text, then adding speaker labels, summaries, and action items on top.
Who makes Otter AI?
AISense Inc., doing business as Otter.ai, a company founded in 2016 by Sam Liang and Yun Fu and based in Mountain View, California.
What is Otter mainly used for?
Meeting notes, interview and lecture transcription, and creating searchable, shareable summaries so people don't have to take notes by hand.
Does Otter work in real time?
Yes. It shows a live transcript that scrolls as people speak, so you can read along during a meeting, not just afterward.