Whether you are building a second brain system, trying to find effective means to capture and record meetings, or hosting a conference that needs subtitles, tools for quick and clean voice-to-text transcription is critical. Otter.ai was an early-to-market solution that continues to grow with the demands of work. The company promotes itself simply: “Otter is your AI assistant that writes and summarizes meeting notes for your team, 30x faster than you can. Otter keeps you organized, so you can find and share key information in seconds.”
Otter offers both real-time transcription and asynchronous. The tool’s accuracy is quite high, at over 95% for asynchronous. Live transcription has some glitches depending on the speaker’s speed and diction. Over time, it learns your vocabulary as any good AI should. Perhaps most useful is the breadth of use cases Otter has developed. It has a generous free plan with a professional plan at $8.33/month. There are education/nonprofit plans and corporate plans as well (pricing ranges according to size).
Otter has solutions for IOS, Android, and the web, including a Chrome extension. You can use it in Zoom, Teams, or Google Meet for live captioning. Otter can be fully integrated into your workflow:
Desktop Homepage. Source: Otter.ai Media Kit
I began experimenting with technology in 2018 after attending a conference that utilized Otter for its live transcription. We use it here at AMT Lab for transcribing all of our podcast audio files. And, many of my current teams use it for their meeting notes. As a small company, it saves us significant time and is a critical component of our tech stack. So much so that I have added it to my personal data flow for creative work and writing.
Otter is not the only tool available for personal or work applications. For mobile or personal transcription, Google Recorder has a solution for Android phones that acts like the IOS Voice Memo but instantly offers both audio and transcription. For business use, Descript offers similar services and is especially useful for those making podcasts as it allows for text editing that updates to audio files, easily removing or replacing ums and poor word choice. Rev is another transcription service with exceptional accuracy but serves mostly as an ancillary tool for audio and video. Fathom which just launched a function for teams and leans more toward applications. It is also more expensive at $30 per team member.
If you are starting to create a business or personal workflow tech stack, I recommend Otter.ai. If you are looking for podcast or video-focused solutions, you may want a different solution. Regardless, as you make your decision sure to examine all the options: your needs, their solutions, and their cost.