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Tell HN: Otter.ai bot recording meetings without consent

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Re: Tell HN: Otter.ai bot recording meetings without consent

#161

Post by wh-uws »

karanmg wrote: post #112

> 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:…

Please let me know when you've got an android app or website I can use.

Love otter but open to others

Re: Tell HN: Otter.ai bot recording meetings without consent

#162

Post by dsiroker »

satyrnein wrote: post #156
dsiroker wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fantastic episode! “The Entire History of You” The biggest difference is that I believe we would all be more honest with one another if we had perfect memory. It would prevent more marital strife than it would create.

I hope you're right, because that world is probably coming, but to play devil's advocate: The biggest difference is that I believe we would all be more honest with one another if we had perfect memory. This reminds me of Mark Zuckerberg believing the world would be a better place if we couldn't have multiple identities, because multiple identities showed a lack of integrity. It would prevent more marital strife than…

Good points.

To be more precise, my point was more practical and less utopian.

The main characters in this episode lie in a way that could easily be proven wrong. It’s fun to watch and dramatic, but I think unrealistic in a world of perfect memory.

Re: Tell HN: Otter.ai bot recording meetings without consent

#163

Post by cc-d »

AJRF wrote: post #69
xyos wrote: post #15

I 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.

Also deleted account. If anyone from Otter.ai is here - don't do this, reverse this change, email anyone affected since the change and apologise and also, i'd advise you to lawyer up.

Odds are they know their market better than you do, and are fully aware of just how serious the consequences from shit like this can be.

but this is capitalism afterall, kind of the point

Re: Tell HN: Otter.ai bot recording meetings without consent

#165

Post by unstatusthequo »

ShakataGaNai wrote: post #59
neilv wrote: post #47

I don't know whether this is bumping into a complicated legal area of audio recording consent, but your company might want to ask a lawyer (about any wrongs to the company, any obligations the company has, etc.). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_call_recording_laws#... If you're not the head of the company, you could raise it with a higher level of management, or ask in-house counsel.

IANAL But transcriptions of calls don't GENERALLY run into the multi-party consent state laws, because the concept of a non-human listening/transcribing a call didn't exist when most of those laws were created. So if the service doesn't keep a copy of the recording (they just transcribe on the fly), then it's probably legal. That being said, most services do announce themselves in someway to cover the legal grey area…

How do you know recordings aren’t kept? For “quality control?” And they probably are recorded and cached. Even if for a minute, that violates statutes. Statutes don’t care about some progressive overbroad app.

Re: Tell HN: Otter.ai bot recording meetings without consent

#166

Post by resoluteteeth »

password4321 wrote: post #86
resoluteteeth wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The VOSK library is good for transcription but there seems like a lack of good simple command line frontends for offline transcription of audio files. mp4grep works and I've been using it but it has some unnecessary features if this is all you want to do (it's mainly designed to cache the transcriptions and let you search them rather than just write them to a text file) and hopefully someone will make a simpler comma…

https://alphacephei.com/vosk/install#usage-examples demonstrates the bare-bones vosk-transcriber sample, and there's also https://www.assemblyai.com/blog/getting-started-with-espnet I wasn't able to play with https://github.com/o-oconnell/mp4grep on ARM.

Ah, vosk-transcriber looks like it's decent, especially if you use srt output so you have timestamps. Probably no reason to use mp4grep for this purpose then.

Re: Tell HN: Otter.ai bot recording meetings without consent

#167

Post by chris_wot »

cc-d wrote: post #163
AJRF wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also deleted account. If anyone from Otter.ai is here - don't do this, reverse this change, email anyone affected since the change and apologise and also, i'd advise you to lawyer up.

Odds are they know their market better than you do, and are fully aware of just how serious the consequences from shit like this can be. but this is capitalism afterall, kind of the point

He is the market, so I'm pretty certain he knows what he wants.

Re: Tell HN: Otter.ai bot recording meetings without consent

#169

Post by chris_wot »

refulgentis wrote: post #149
arikr wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

He didn't want Otter.ai to transcribe. He had turned it off!

Re: Tell HN: Otter.ai bot recording meetings without consent

#170

Post by mike_d »

rwhitman wrote: post #136

I rely on Otter pretty heavily these days. 100% agree that recording and sending the transcript to meeting attendees without their knowledge is a really bad move from several angles. I work sales calls set up with Calendly and Otter joins them all. These are very technical so normally it's fantastic - EXCEPT if we start talking early or the prospect doesn't follow the invite and never joins the call, then they would…

I now refuse to join sales meetings setup by vendors. Any meeting has to be on Google Meet using our domain because of dumb shit like Gong, Otter, and other stuff that records our employees without permission.
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