What is Otter.ai? How to transcribe meetings with AI

Meeting transcription software is almost a non-negotiable these days. With the power of AI, having transcripts of your calls opens up a world of possibilities—think: automatically creating meeting summaries and action items.

Otter is a leader in the meeting transcription space, and when I first saw it in action, its performance surprised me—I didn’t know AI transcription apps could be so accurate. Now, it’s my go-to app whenever I want to turn speech into text. Here, I’ll walk through some of the features, so you can decide if it fits your toolkit.

Table of contents:

What is Otter.ai?

Otter is voice-to-text transcription software that uses artificial intelligence. It picks up the voice in an audio feed, processes it through an AI algorithm, and starts stacking the words on the page, ready to read, highlight, and copy. While this is the core of the app, it also includes a set of features that help you leverage transcription in other ways:

• You can install the Otter mobile app on your phone and record your thoughts or interview anyone on the go.

• If you have audio or video files with voice, you can upload them to Otter, and it’ll start turning everything into text.

• When you’re dealing with lots of video meetings, you can set up OtterPilot to join each call with you and automatically transcribe everything that’s said.

Otter may end up processing a lot of sensitive information—after all, you’re plugging in an app that hears everything you’re saying. That’s why the app’s developers have worked on robust privacy features, which include SOC 2 Type 2, GDPR, CCPA, and VPAT compliance. But still, something to keep in mind.

Otter.ai accuracy

Otter’s accuracy is pretty good, but it isn’t perfect—not yet, at least. Its main enemies are big spaces with a lot of echo and background noise. Also, while it does well even with tricky English accents, those of us that skip enunciating some words clearly or eat a few vowels can also lead Otter to make mistakes.

I’ve read studies online that place Otter’s accuracy anywhere between 75% to 90%. I’ve run my own test. Here’s the paragraph I recorded:

Zapier is a web-based automation tool that allows users to connect various web applications and automate tasks between them. With Zapier, users can create “Zaps,” which are automated workflows that can move information between apps, trigger actions in one app based on events in another app, and automate repetitive tasks. Zapier integrates with over 5,000 apps, including popular ones like Gmail, Slack, Trello, and Salesforce. It provides users with a user-friendly interface that does not require coding or technical knowledge to set up and use.

The results are in:

I recorded this in a small, quiet room, not making too much effort on enunciation, and in one try. Except for mistaking Zapier for “SAP here” at the beginning, it’s on point. However, you’ll notice that punctuation accuracy can fluctuate a bit. A few commas may become full stops and vice versa.

Keeping this in mind, to have the best accuracy possible:

• Make sure you’re in a room with little echo.

• Reduce background noise as much as possible.

• If you notice Otter is making a lot of mistakes, consider speaking more slowly.

With this level of accuracy, it should be enough to keep track of what’s been said in meetings or to have a record of your thoughts. Still, if you find rough bits in a transcription, you can play it back and fix the imprecisions. As you hear the recording, Otter highlights the word that’s being said, so you can easily follow along and make corrections.

How to use Otter.ai to take voice notes

Otter works for voice recording too.

For example, I started “writing” a few first drafts using my voice. I like it because it lets my hands rest, allows me to talk out ideas I wouldn’t probably write, and I can skip directly to editing. Talking seems to activate different thinking muscles, too, and make the text more conversational—just make sure to cut the filler words if you’re using it to write a piece you’ll publish later.

The use cases go well beyond this, of course. YouTube creators and scriptwriters can save time when preparing new videos. Journalists and marketers can run impromptu interviews on the spot. Podcasters can keep Otter running in the background as they record to have the content ready for repurposing for social media or a personal blog. And if you forget to use Otter live, you can always upload an audio or video file and get the transcription later.

In my opinion, the mobile app is best for recording your own thoughts. Tap on the lower-right microphone button and select New recording. The words will appear as you speak, and you can tap the Highlight icon to mark important ideas. If you’re out and about, you can also click the Image icon to add a picture and a few text comments to the transcription using your phone’s camera.

The web app works in a similar way. You’ll find both the Record and the Import Audio/Video buttons on the top-right of the screen. When you upload a file for transcription, it takes a bit of time to process everything. Once it’s done, you’ll get the output in the My Conversations tab.

How to use Otter.ai as an AI note taker

There’s more than simple transcription in Otter. It also has a set of collaboration features to help businesses improve productivity and keep information available to everyone who needs it.

OtterPilot

The shiniest feature is Otter’s bot, OtterPilot. Once you connect your (Google or Microsoft) calendar, you can see which meetings are coming up. The bot will join each meeting automatically—be it in Zoom, Google Meet, or Microsoft Teams—and put pen to paper. This happens even if you’re running late or not attending the meeting at all. Your faithful bot will still join and act as your digital scribe.

For meetings that aren’t on the schedule, Otter lets you paste in the URL of that meeting (look to the top menu bar on the right of the home page for the input field to do this). Once you do, it’ll jump into it and start transcribing it too.

Another option here is installing the Chrome extension: it will start detecting any meeting links you click and any events on your calendar that represent meetings. You can then send Otter out to those meetings directly from your browser. (Note: As of October 2024, Otter’s Chrome extension is temporarily unavailable. Check Otter’s Help Desk to see if it’s up and running again.)

OtterPilot also has a version for sales aptly named OtterPilot for Sales. This bot adds sales insights to calls and automatically pushes them to Salesforce and HubSpot.

Naming speakers

Lots of different people talk in meetings, so it makes sense that Otter separates text for each speaker. If Otter isn’t sure who it is, you can:

1. Click to edit the meeting transcript.

2. Click on the unnamed speaker.

3. From the dropdown, pick the person that was speaking at that part of the meeting.

Frequent keywords

When it’s time to read and review your transcriptions, you’ll be able to take a look at the most frequent keywords. Clicking on each one will highlight it in the text. The frequent keywords functionality lets you do quick sentiment analysis or track the topics that are coming up more frequently. 

(Note: The ability to click on keywords wasn’t available when we checked in December 2024, but Otter plans on bringing it back.)

Action items

Otter also generates a collection of the key takeaways in the Summary tab and offers action item suggestions along with the summary. Just like your transcript, you can edit and add to these sections to create an accurate and insightful overview of your recording. Keep in mind that Otter may not generate anything for a shorter recording, likely because there’s not enough material to work with.

Folders

Crossing the hundred transcription mark? If you’re spending more time looking for the right transcript instead of getting things done, you can create folders to keep everything with the same topic or purpose together. 

Direct messages

Instead of opening your email app and typing it out, you can send a direct message in Otter. Record what you want to say, enter the email of the recipient, and your message will fly out. There’s a downside here: the recipient needs to create an Otter account to see it, but that shouldn’t be a major problem since there’s a generous free plan available.

Custom vocabulary

When using Otter for work, you can create a custom vocabulary, which increases accuracy for industry-specific jargon. Click on the dropdown by your name on the home page, go to Account Settings, and then choose Manage Vocabulary.

Otter AI Chat

Otter also offers an AI tool to help you understand and organize your recordings. Ask Otter’s AI chatbot about any information from your recordings, and it’ll find and summarize it for you. You can use the chat on its standalone page to go through all your recordings or to the right of a transcript to search that specific text. AI Chat also has generative capabilities, meaning you can ask it to write emails or other documents based on your transcriptions.

Channels

Otter’s channels work similarly to Slack or Discord, where you have an open chat with anyone who belongs to that channel. They also connect to Otter’s AI Chat so you can reference your recordings as you talk. Since Otter lets you open up a channel to your workplace or choose a specific list of people, you have a lot of control over your conversations.

Automate Otter with Zapier

Otter is useful, flexible, and can save you a lot of typing. It has a free plan, which includes 300 minutes per month, with a limit of 30 minutes per conversation. The paid plans start at $16.99, increase the number of minutes you have available, and add something I find curious: if you manage to find yourself double-booked, OtterPilot will join both meetings and feed the transcripts back to you. Who knew you could be omnipresent?

You can do even more with Otter when you connect it with Zapier. Automatically send Otter recordings wherever you need them or import speech to Otter from any other app. Here are some pre-made workflows to get you started, but you can connect Otter with thousands of other apps using Zapier.

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This article was originally published in April 2023. The most recent update, with contributions from Melissa King, was in December 2024.