Otter.ai can now automatically listen to and transcribe long Zoom calls

The online service's assistant will now be able to listen in on your groups calls and provide transcription to users which will be accessible to all users.

Otter.ai will transcribe all those long meetings on your behalf.  (Otter.ai)

Thanks to the novel coronavirus pandemic, many offices have shifted to remote working setups, relying on tools like video meeting apps and task assignment apps to better coordinate while working from home. However, as the months of lockdown continue, these apps can have a tiresome effect, especially videoconferencing apps. Otter.ai, a voice transcription service has now launched its Otter assistant to attend meetings and transcribe them for you.

The feature will be available for all Otter.ai Business customers and will allow users to access a full transcription of a long meeting that they weren't too keen on attending – or if they had another one overlapping the one they were attending, according to TechCrunch. 

The always-on feature can be controlled from the “My Agenda” section on iOS and Android, the feature itself is optional, but it sounds like it could come in very handy, especially for long meetings where you may be needed somewhere else – or in another meeting.

So if your company has an Otter.ai premium subscription and you want to get started with the Otter.ai transcription assistant, you'll first need to connect your Google Calendar or Microsoft Calendar with Otter's service from inside the app.

Linking your accounts will allow Otter.ai to see when you're upcoming meetings are scheduled and then automatically join and turn on transcription of the audio. The assistant will be able to transcribe the entire meeting, but it remains to be seen how effective it will be with disturbances, varying accents and so on.

Since there's going to be a non-human participant in the meeting, the Otter.ai assistant will join the meeting as itself when joining a meeting, and provide a copy of the meeting transcription for everyone present, which they can edit and transform using images and highlighting tools, according to the report. Since the system will automatically enable transcription for the service, it has to be turned off individually if you don't want it enabled for a meeting.