The Otter.ai audio transcription engine was generated with core technology developed by the company's funding team, which previously led development of technologies in mobile, search, speech, and data analytics at companies like Google, Facebook, Uber, Cisco, and Nuance. The Otter.ai transcription engine, which is cloud-based, was optimized for conversations and is able to detect different speakers.
The new Otter Live Video Meeting Notes service is available today for Otter for Teams and Zoom Pro subscribers or higher. This is the first of many video collaboration integrations, according to the company. The service was designed for business users working from home and students attending classes online who want to highlight, share, search, and review their notes.
"Team members can feel confident that their colleagues will generate and share secure quality notes so they can quickly get the information they need when they miss a meeting. Otter is an especially valuable productivity tool for business users without daycare or school support who are juggling back-to-back video meetings, may not be able to join a meeting, or want to refer later to the meeting notes," the company states.
"Virtual meetings have skyrocketed during the COVID-19 outbreak as organizations recognize that high quality voice meeting notes are a critical tool for employee productivity when collaborating within an office or in any virtual meeting,” says Sam Liang, CEO and founder of Otter.ai. Otter usage with Zoom meetings has increased by more than 5X in the past few weeks and we’re seeing new sign-ups from remote workers and distance learning. Otter has transcribed more than 25 million meetings, accounting for more than 750 million transcribed meeting minutes to date.”
The Otter.ai Live Video Meeting Notes Zoom integration includes live transcription, allowing all meeting participants to open the Otter.ai Live Transcript in the LIVE menu at the top of the Zoom window and highlight, comment, or add photos to the live meeting notes. Meeting hosts are required to have an Otter for Teams subscription. Otter.ai will also automatically download Zoom cloud recordings for transcription, available to all Otter.ai users. And the application can capture both sides of a conversation when users have headsets or earbuds on.
Otter for Teams is a premium subscription service option that offers enterprise-ready web and mobile applications to provide businesses with additional collaboration, administration, and security capabilities. This includes real-time, shareable, and collaboratively annotatable transcription with Live Video Meeting Notes, a team-wide custom vocabulary for boosting the accuracy of unique names, industry-specific terms, acronyms, and jargon, plus centralized billing and user management.
"The Otter.ai transcriptions provide our students with futuristic note taking services in a world where distractions are plentiful," says Joshua Hori, Accessible Technology Analyst at University of California, Davis. "As campuses work towards implementing universal design, Otter.ai has brought us that much closer in creating accessibility for all students, and allows us to focus our real-time captioning resources where needed."
Otter.ai also generates smart notes that sync audio, text, and images, allowing users to search, play, edit, organize, and share meeting notes from any device via the Otter Voice Meeting Notes app. The company developed and owns its proprietary stack, including automated speech recognition, speaker separation (diarization) and identification, word synchronization, and summarization.
www.otter.ai
