THANK YOU for posting this. My partner uses Otter, and HIS Otter bot will join my work meetings that he is not even invited to. He's sent me some recordings within the app in the past and we share calendars, but it still doesn't explain why this would happen. We've emailed Otter multiple times since July 2021 without any satisfactory response or investigation. You'd think they would take this privacy issue more seriously. Truly absurd.
Tell HN: Otter.ai bot recording meetings without consent
141–150 of 191 posts
Re: Tell HN: Otter.ai bot recording meetings without consent
#142> Are there other, more privacy oriented transcription services anyone can recommend? Yes. Try https://aliceapp.ai , the iOS app's in the AppStore: https://aliceapp.ai/app . I created this specifically to be as privacy conscious as possible. There's a small, but strong team of engineers behind this and I'm the primary investor. It's not perfect, but works pretty well, with many relying on it everyday. From the FAQs:…
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Re: Tell HN: Otter.ai bot recording meetings without consent
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
That isn't going to fly is it? I didn't know this software did this when configured in this way isn't really something that moves the liability.
He specifically _didn't_ configure it in that way.
How many times has a user said they didn't configure something that way and when you checked they did and they were thinking about a different setting for something else? Realisitically, it's actually the most likely thing that happened.
And he did have it configured to send out emails. So that part is true.
Re: Tell HN: Otter.ai bot recording meetings without consent
#144We are building a privacy-first transcription & recording solution. Sign up at https://www.rewind.ai for early access or if you are super eager email me at dan@ at the domain above.
Unless it's entirely self-hostable and/or runs entirely locally on the user's machine, it's a hard pass from me. Also, this marketing copy makes your product sound a lot more like some kind of AI hype scam than an actual product: > What if we could use technology to augment our memory the same way a hearing aid can augment our hearing? This question is why we founded Rewind. > > Our vision is to give humans perfect m…
That was a pretty good Black Mirror episode!
Re: Tell HN: Otter.ai bot recording meetings without consent
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
He specifically _didn't_ configure it in that way.
How many times has a user said they didn't configure something that way and when you checked they did and they were thinking about a different setting for something else? Realisitically, it's actually the most likely thing that happened. And he did have it configured to send out emails. So that part is true.
If they're lying or mistaken, let us discuss the lie or mistake, and even the possibility that there could have been a lie or mistake (based on something.) Just dismissing it based on a obvious counterfactual that you're declaring based on no evidence other than that you think users lie and developers don't make mistakes is a waste of time.
If you have some kind of insight into the specific configuration of otter.ai, or evidence that this specific person has made a mistake (and that all of the other people that have also seen this behavior are also mistaken) that would be constructive. As it is, you're not even carrying water for a company, you're offering water to a company that didn't ask for it by denigrating the people around you.
Re: Tell HN: Otter.ai bot recording meetings without consent
#146> The bot proceeded to join two confidential meetings on my behalf and record the whole thing, then email every member an absurd, inaccurate "outline" after. Can you explain how it was able to do this, apparently without people noticing? From what I understand it joins the meeting as a participant, which would be pretty obvious?
To clarify, it joined as a very obvious user. It was not without people noticing, they didn't really seem to care but I did. I was not the meeting organizer so I could not kick it and didn't want to derail the discussion with explaining how I couldn't control my own computer (great look in front of clients), so we just proceeded with it recording.
The automatically emailed outline afterwards was the cherry on top, though, as it was filled with AI generated questions that I absolutely did not need answered. I got one response from someone that patiently explained some of the answers to the (idiotic) questions - how embarrassing.
Re: Tell HN: Otter.ai bot recording meetings without consent
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
Um, yes? That's how it works with literally every piece of software that have any permissions locally. What if Google Chrome decided to do the same thing unilaterally?
Some security conscious organizations will ban all external software and then approve exceptions on a case by case basis as they pop up. In such a place, someone has already long ago submitted a ticket to have Google Chrome blessed and the employee installing Chrome is following regs.
Yes, in my case the CEO recommended we use Otter to keep all of the meetings on our dozens of projects straight.
It's not that we didn't want to use it sometimes, it's that I had no desire to use it for these times and it went completely rogue. That could happen with any software, even an OS itself.
Re: Tell HN: Otter.ai bot recording meetings without consent
#148[flagged]
Holy cow, I'm impressed that you bothered to respond here and yet did not respond to the part where I very carefully opted out of this when it was offered. My coworker was already confused how this happened to her, so I knew what to look for and yet this still happened.
When I opened Otter there was a large splash screen that said "Enable Otter Assistant" in a big blue button - I looked around and found "Skip" in gray in the upper right. My settings show Otter Assistant is off, and I never touched them.
Re: Tell HN: Otter.ai bot recording meetings without consent
#149I just deleted my account because of that, also they share conversations with everyone in the meeting by DEFAULT, it wasn't nice receiving a message from a co-worker telling me that he received an email with the transcription it generated.
Wtf, that's terrible UX.
Even more terrible is using a recording service when you're in a meeting with me, not telling me, then complaining the real problem is the service told me
Re: Tell HN: Otter.ai bot recording meetings without consent
#150> Are there other, more privacy oriented transcription services anyone can recommend? Yes. Try https://aliceapp.ai , the iOS app's in the AppStore: https://aliceapp.ai/app . I created this specifically to be as privacy conscious as possible. There's a small, but strong team of engineers behind this and I'm the primary investor. It's not perfect, but works pretty well, with many relying on it everyday. From the FAQs:…
$3/hour or more!??! That is insane. Anything more than $1/month is a rip-off.