Otter AI Review: Useful Tools, Messy Transcripts
Otter AI is an easy-to-use recording and transcription service. But there are some hard limits on what it's capable of and how you can use it.
Our Experts
Pros
- Easy to record and edit transcripts
- Audio and text are linked in transcripts
- Gen AI chat tool great for catching up, generating summaries and listing action items
Cons
- Limited recording time and uploads in every plan (except business)
- Transcript errors
Otter.ai wants to be your work bestie. The one you privately DM during a meeting and ask "Wait, what just happened?" and whose notes you borrow when you miss a meeting.
I've been using Otter for years, and the AI tool is a one-stop shop for recording, transcribing and summarizing meetings. Otter has made many improvements since I started using it, making it easier to record and edit transcripts and creating a gen AI-powered chatbot that helps you find the most important information shared during meetings. But like any AI-powered service, it has wonky moments and peculiarities.
If you're in the market for a meeting assistant, Otter is a strong candidate. You'll get the most value out of the service if your calendar is more meeting-heavy, as Otter helps you note important action items and decisions made in each meeting. If you need only the occasional recording, the free plan is still robust enough feature-wise to make it worthwhile.
How CNET tests AI tools
CNET takes a practical approach to reviewing AI tools, with the goal of determining how good AI is at performing the task it promises to assist. These tests vary by tool, for example evaluating the quality of summaries from Otter AI, the meeting assistant we're reviewing here, and whether AI suggestions from Grammarly, a writing assistant, help the process. We score the tool on a 10-point scale, which considers the overall usefulness of the tool and whether AI improves its effectiveness. See how we test AI for more.
Great for playing catch-up on missed meetings
You can use Otter as a standalone service or integrate it with your accounts on Slack, Microsoft and Google. If you do integrate it with your calendars, you can easily see all your meetings for the day in the left side menu and decide which you want to use Otter to record by easily toggling on and off the microphone widget. Either way, all you need to do is click a few buttons and you're ready to record; it couldn't be easier to navigate and use. Compared with Zoom and Microsoft Teams, Otter lets you share recordings pretty painlessly. Still, you may not be able to share recordings with someone outside your organization with a business account.
Otter will only record your audio, not your video. When your meeting is over, Otter will finalize your transcript quickly. You can tag each speaker with their name, and Otter will automatically update the transcript to reflect each voice with their assigned name. You don't have to worry about tagging the speaker in every section -- occasionally Otter will struggle to confirm the voice, but it's usually quick and easy.
One of the nice things about Otter is that the audio of the meeting is combined with the transcribed text. So when you go through the transcript and click on one section of the text, the audio from that point will play. You can follow along with the text as the audio plays. This makes it easy to edit your transcript since you can hear the exact audio you need while editing the transcript text. Other services like Zoom and Microsoft Teams don't combine the meeting audio with the transcript, so this is a major perk to using Otter.
Here's an example of the summaries Otter automatically generates after each call.
Otter also automatically generates a summary, outline and action items for every meeting. These summaries make it easy to catch up on the assignments and main takeaways without reading or listening to the full transcript -- a great time saver. The only downside is that once these summaries are created, they can't be updated, even if you go back and tag new speakers. I have a lot of meeting summaries about "Katelyn and Speaker 2" and unassigned action items, which is annoying. But Otter's gen AI tool can create new meeting summaries and action items based on the updated transcript, so there's a workaround for this issue.
But Otter transcripts still need a good cleaning
Transcribers everywhere can attest to the fact that creating a clean, accurate record is a hefty task. AI-powered services like Otter do the best they can, but if they aren't up to the task, our natural speech patterns can create a jumble of a transcript. And cleaning up transcripts is painstakingly boring, detailed work.
Otter transcripts are pretty raw. They require a good bit of cleaning before you can read them seamlessly. The issues you run into will depend on your speakers' natural speech pattern, but throughout my testing of Otter, I ran into several common issues. Otter would break up the same train of thought from the same speaker into separate sections. Or it would combine one speaker's presentation into one giant block of text. It also has a hard time with proper nouns, names and acronyms.
These are issues that every transcription service faces, so I'm not expecting Otter to have solved all of these issues. But Otter certainly doesn't get bonus points for its transcript cleanliness -- I've had to manually edit many Otter transcripts, and not just for the occasional mistranslation. They require a good bit of work, especially if you need exact quotes or a clean doc to share.
Otter's transcripts are better than Zoom's, but that really isn't saying much. While Zoom recordings include video, something Otter doesn't do, the raw TXT files for Zoom transcripts are a nightmare to clean. Otter is a good middle ground, with the audio linked to the text as an easy verification method and easy editing abilities. Just be prepared to use these features often to fix transcription errors.
Otter AI Chat cuts through the noise
Is it really an AI service if it doesn't have a gen AI chatbot? Don't worry, Otter has one, appropriately named Otter AI Chat. The feature is available in every Otter plan and analyzes the text in your meeting transcript to answer your questions and prompts. It can analyze key announcements, create a list of assigned tasks, isolate final decisions and more. You can also just chat with the tool using the channel in the side menu, but I've found it's most helpful in parsing through a particular recording.
To start testing AI Chat, I used an Otter conversation from an interview I did nearly a year ago. I only vaguely remembered what we talked about, so I wanted to see how well Otter could jog my memory without my reading the whole transcript.
Otter AI Chat produces more useful meeting summaries than the initial ones Otter automatically generates after a recording has ended. This is because the AI uses the most recent version of the transcript as its base -- no more "Speaker 2" and unassigned action items after you've tagged speakers. When I asked AI Chat to give me a summary of the meeting, it gave me an in-depth bulleted summary that nailed all the main questions I asked and the interviewee's general answers. It was like combining the summary and outline, which was more helpful than either individually. The AI Chat didn't include any exact quotes, which I would've liked, but it was pretty thorough.
Here you can see the difference in the automatically generated meeting summary versus what Otter AI Chat produces. I found the AI Chat's to be more useful.
Otter AI Chat is also great for cutting through the noise. In a newer Otter transcript of Disney's 2024 first quarter earnings call, the automated summary is full of corporate buzzwords that don't really tell me much about the company's upcoming plans. But when I asked "Otter, what were the biggest announcements," I got a list of the top five upcoming releases and partnerships, most of which were absent from the original summary.
Want to upgrade? You'll still have limits
While the actual functionality and features of Otter are decent, I take issue with its pricing structure. If I'm going to shell out my hard-earned money for a premium version of Otter, I think it's fair to ask for unlimited recording minutes and unlimited uploads. Unfortunately, this isn't the case. With the Basic plan, you get 300 minutes of recording time per month, a 30-minute cut-off for each recording and three opportunities to upload an outside file for Otter to analyze and transcribe. With the Pro plan starting at $10 a month, you get 1,200 minutes of recording time, with a 90-minute cutoff for each and nine free uploads.
Let's put those numbers into context. The Pro plan offers 1,200 minutes of recording time per month, which is 20 hours. Using four weeks per month, that comes out to 5 hours of recording time per week -- which may or may not be enough to cover your needs. With the Basic plan, you get 5 hours total for the month, a little more than an hour per week. But even if you have leftover time at the end of the month, it won't carry over to the next.
I don't mind a few inconveniences in exchange for a free service, but if I'm paying, I want the training wheels taken off. I don't want to run into paywalls if I'm paying for a premium service. Or worse, realize that the end of my meeting didn't record or that I have to find another way to transcribe an audio file. It's the principle of the matter for me.
If you want unlimited minutes and uploads, you'll need a business or enterprise plan -- which then might limit your ability to share recordings.
Otter is great overall
In the years I've used Otter, it's made substantial improvements. There are places where Otter knocks its competition out of the park, like how easy it is to record meetings and edit transcripts, along with its helpful AI Chat. But being the best in some places doesn't make it immune to problems, particularly with transcript accuracy and cleanliness.
The value you'll find in Otter depends heavily on how often you're in meetings you need to record. If you're constantly booked up -- especially with longer meetings -- Otter Pro can be a great way to ensure you don't forget or miss anything. If you need only the occasional transcript, stick with the free plan. No matter your plan, I would recommend using Otter AI Chat for summaries, outlines and action items. The initial ones populated are good, but the gen AI ones are better.
So, should Otter become your new work bestie? It certainly can't hurt. For those unavoidable absences, Otter's recording, transcription and analyses make it easy to catch up without listening to the entire recording (... as long as someone remembers to record the meeting).
Editor's note: CNET is using an AI engine to help create a handful of stories. Reviews of AI products like this, just like CNET's other hands-on reviews, are written by our human team of in-house experts. For more, see CNET's AI policy and how we test AI.