Otter.ai Class Action Over Secret Meeting Recordings for AI Training

A federal class-action lawsuit filed in the Northern District of California accuses Otter.ai of secretly recording private conversations in Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams meetings through its Otter Notetaker service and using those recordings to train its AI without the knowledge or consent of all participants. The plaintiff, Justin Brewer of San Jacinto, California, joined a February meeting where Otter Notetaker was active and says he did not have an Otter account or any awareness that the service would capture his data or be used to train the company’s speech recognition and machine-learning models. The suit seeks class-action status, representing others in California and beyond who were recorded without proper notice, and argues violations of state and federal privacy and wiretap laws.

The complaint centers on how Otter Notetaker operates. When a host with an Otter account connects Otter to a meeting, the software is designed to request permission from the host to record. By contrast, the service does not automatically seek consent from all other participants in the call. The filing contends that if the host has integrated Otter with their conferencing accounts, an...