Otter AI Faces Class-Action Lawsuit Over Alleged Privacy Violations in Meeting Transcriptions

Using Otter Notetaker? This Lawsuit Claims It Broke Privacy Laws

The complaint argues that as Otter Notetaker failed to disclose when it was active and recording meetings, when other members had not given consent, it was in violation of federal and California privacy laws. Popular AI transcription tool Otter has been hit by a federal lawsuit which alleges it "recorded, accessed, read, learned, and utilized" the contents of people's conversations without getting the necessary consent first. It also claims Otter used these conversations to train its machine learning technology. The complaint, filed in US District Court for the Northern District of California, focuses on one of Otter's products, Otter Notetaker, which produces real-time transcriptions of Google Meet, Zoom, and Microsoft Teams meetings. The suit says that Otter recorded not only account holders who use Otter Notetaker but meeting participants who do not subscribe to Otter's services. It argues that as Otter failed to disclose when it was active and recording meetings, when the other members had not given consent, it is in violation of both federal and California privacy laws. These include the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 and the California Invasion of Privacy Act. It is seeking class-action status. The plaintiff, Justin Brewer, participated in a Zoom meeting in February 2025, where Otter Notetaker was used to transcribe a meeting he attended. As he did not know he was being recorded or give his consent to the transcription, the complaint says this allowed Otter to "wiretap his communications." Though Otter's privacy policy clearly states that it "de-identified" its audio recordings, meaning the recordings were altered to remove the identifying data, it pointed to research on the ineffectiveness of these techniques. The complaint also highlights that one of Otter's competitors, Read.ai, permits any participant, including those who do not use Read.ai, to stop recording during a meeting. This isn't the first time privacy issues have been raised about Otter's services. In 2024, the University of Massachusetts banned Otter.ai, as its IT department said it violated the state's all‑party consent law. NPR, which covered the lawsuit, noted that a Politico journalist who interviewed a Uighur human rights activist raised concerns in 2024 that the Chinese government could attempt to access the transcriptions of his conversations with political dissidents. PCMag has reached out to Otter for comment.

Class-action suit claims Otter AI secretly records private work conversations

Otter.ai is a Mountain View, Calif.-based tech company that uses artificial intelligence to generate speech-to-text transcriptions. It has become a popular tool for transcribing virtual office meetings. Source: Otter hide caption A federal lawsuit seeking class-action status accuses Otter.ai of "deceptively and surreptitiously" recording private conversations that the tech company allegedly uses to train its popular transcription service without permission from the people using it. The company's AI-powered transcription service called Otter Notebook, which can do real-time transcriptions of Zoom, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams meetings, by default does not ask meeting attendees for permission to record and fails to alert participants that recordings are shared with Otter to improve its artificial intelligence systems, according to the suit filed on Friday. The plaintiff in the suit is a man named Justin Brewer of San Jacinto, Calif., who alleges his privacy was "severely invaded" upon realizing Otter was secretly recording a confidential conversation. The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, claims Otter's covert recording violates state and federal privacy and wiretap laws. It seeks to represent others in California who have had chats unknowingly shared with Otter to "derive financial gain." Neither Brewer's legal team nor a spokesperson for Otter returned requests for comment. In recent months, new privacy questions have dogged Otter as it has become increasingly deployed in workplaces around the world. Some 25 million people now use its AI transcription tools, which have recorded and processed more than 1 billion meetings since the company was founded in 2016, the company says. Users have shared horror stories on platforms such as X and Reddit about Otter's automated recording tools backfiring. Last year, an AI researcher and engineer said Otter had recorded a Zoom meeting with investors, then shared with him a transcription of the chat including "intimate, confidential details" about a business discussed after he had left the meeting. Those portions of the conversation ended up killing a deal, The Washington Post reported. Politico's China correspondent has written about interviewing a Uyghur human rights activist using Otter and realizing that the company shares user data with third parties, raising fears over the possibility that the Chinese government could attempt to access raw transcriptions of conversations with dissidents. Otter has said it does not share any data with foreign governments or law enforcement agencies. On Reddit, users have complained about Otter joining meetings automatically when the service is linked to workplace calendars and recording chats without consent. It's a phenomenon also highlighted by the lawsuit. If someone has an Otter account and joins a virtual meeting, the software will typically ask the meeting's host for permission to record, but it does not by default ask all the other participants. "In fact, if the meeting host is an Otter accountholder who has integrated their relevant Google Meet, Zoom, or Microsoft Teams accounts with Otter, an Otter Notetaker may join the meeting without obtaining the affirmative consent from any meeting participant, including the host," the lawsuit alleges. "What Otter has done is use its Otter Notetaker meeting assistant to record, transcribe, and utilize the contents of conversations without the Class members' informed consent." Otter claims that before the audio of meetings is fed into its machine learning systems to help improve an AI speech recognition feature, it is "de-identified," a method by which data can be anonymized. Yet the suit filed on Friday raises concerns about Otter's ability to do this effectively, saying the company provides no public explanation of its "de-identifying" process. "Upon information and belief, Otter's deidentification process does not remove confidential information or guarantee speaker anonymity," the lawsuit argues.

Lawsuit against Otter AI claims it records meetings without consent

Transcription tool Otter AI has long had an "assistant" service to transcribe video meetings. "Otter Notetaker" can enter a Zoom, Google Meet, or Microsoft Teams call and jot down what participants are saying in real-time. Now, a class action lawsuit filed Friday claims Otter's Notetaker doesn't just record people who want the recordings, but also those who haven't subscribed to its services or consented to being recorded. Not only that, but the suit states that Otter doesn't disclose to those who set up Otter Notetaker that the transcriptions are used to train Otter's automatic speech recognition and machine learning models. California resident Justin Brewer is filing this lawsuit on behalf of himself and other Californians and Americans, saying Otter intercepted his conversations. The suit claims Otter violates both federal and California law, such as the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 and the California Invasion of Privacy Act. The suit states that Brewer doesn't have an Otter account but participated in a Zoom meeting in February where Otter Notetaker was used. He wasn't aware that Otter would obtain and keep that data and wasn't informed that the service would use this data to train its speech recognition and machine learning tools. Brewer didn't consent to this and "had his privacy severely invaded and been exposed to the risk and harmful conditions created by Otter's violations of federal and California law," the suit reads. Otter's privacy policy states that it trains its AI technology on "de-identified" audio recordings. It also says it gains explicit permission to access the conversation for training, yet the suit claims that Otter Notetaker asks for consent to join and record a meeting from the meeting host (if the host doesn't have an Otter account). It doesn't ask to join the meeting from any other participant, nor does it allow anyone but the meeting host to disable Otter Notetaker, according to the filing.