Otter Extends Secretarial Virtual Assistant to Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, and Webex
Transcription AI startup Otter.ai has expanded the reach of its virtual assistant to Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, and Cisco Webex video conference platforms after originally debuting just for Zoom in May. The secretarial AI takes up recording, transcribing, and note-taking tasks during meetings and can share them with participants after it’s over.
Secretary Otter
The Otter Assistant integrates with a user’s existing calendar once it’s installed on the relevant meeting platform. The AI will, with permission, automatically join meetings marked on that schedule and start recording and taking notes in the background after it begins. The assistant performs these duties in real-time, allowing participants to observe and edit as they choose. The AI can perform its tasks regardless of whether the user is the host or just a participant, and everyone can check out the completed notes taken by Otter online or on the Otter mobile app. Anyone in the meeting can augment the notes with text or images to highlight important things the AI missed or edit the transcript when it made an error. Otter will also send the notes to anyone the user chooses, so they can see what happened even if they couldn’t make the meeting.
“With more companies adapting to a hybrid work model where professionals work and take meetings in-office, at home, and on mobile, many are looking to Otter as a tool to improve team communication and collaboration,” Otter.ai CEO Sam Liang said. “We’re excited to make using Otter even easier and more accessible no matter where or how people conduct and participate in meetings.”
Transcription Frenzy
The 500 million daily users of the four platforms mean a lot of new potential Otter users. Google Meet already offered Otter’s real-time transcription service as a free feature, but the new assistant covers a lot more ground. The extras cost money, though, needing an Otter Business subscription that starts at $20 a month. Otter isn’t the only option for transcription of meetings, however. Australian voice AI developer Dubber’s Unified Call Recording works on Zoom, and the other platforms have native and third-party tools to do similar things to Otter’s assistant. Transcribing and analyzing calls is a big business now, with lots of large dollar amounts getting tossed around. That’s why Observe.AI could raise $54 million, and Replicant could pick up $27 million in September. Meanwhile, Dialpad beat everyone with a $100 million raise in October, and Verbit closed a $60 million round in November. Otter’s been pushing to be a bigger part of the transcription and note-taking space in the wake of the shift to working from home over the last year, raising $50 million in February to accelerate the process. And with revenue up 800% in 2020, it seems to have an angle on the industry that could push it ahead of any competition.
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Otter Releases Virtual Assistant for Transcribing Zoom Conversations
Google Meet Adds Real-Time Transcription From Voice Tech Startup Otter.ai
