Otter.ai thinks its new generative AI tools will give Microsoft, Google, and Zoom a run for their money

Otter.ai has unveiled a raft of new features it says will enable users to leverage generative AI across meetings, chats, and channels in a bid to drive productivity. 

The ‘Meeting GenAI’ tool will offer three distinct new features for users. This includes the implementation of AI chat across all meetings, the introduction of collaborative AI-enabled channels, and updated AI conversation summary capabilities.

The first feature is perhaps the most foundational to the new offering, the company said.

Rather than just assessing and analyzing the data of one specific meeting, Otter’s AI chat will develop a comprehensive and constantly growing data set of an organization's entire history of conversations.

The remit of this tool will apply to conversations on other platforms as well. 

There is value here for those who require a more detailed level of meeting-data from a longer period of time, such as those in the C-suite looking to extrapolate trends. Employees who’ve had to take time off would also benefit, according to the firm, enabling them to catch up on missed conversations and meetings.

Otter.ai targets competition with industry heavyweights

According to Otter.ai, the launch of these new capabilities positions the platform as a competitor to other industry leading brands in the productivity application space.

So far, Microsoft Copilot, Zoom AI companion, and Google's Duet AI (now Gemini for Workspace) only offer siloed, single meeting AI capabilities, the firm said.

Otter even goes as far as to suggest that it’s new offering “slingshots past Microsoft Copilot to redefine AI meeting intelligence.”

Otter isn’t just looking to compete with Microsoft, though. The second key feature, AI-enabled channels, reportedly “goes beyond OpenAI’s ChatGPT single-user chat” by allowing for multi-user use.

This tool will focus on team productivity, combining meeting information with personnel communications. Users will be able to chat with Otter AI and with one another at the same time. 

Further embedding Otter AI chat into a user’s workflow, this feature will make it easier and more efficient to generate AI responses that relate to specific teams and projects. 

This feature is also apparently the “first ever collaborative AI chat” and the company is awaiting a patent to protect the idea. 

Finally, Otter is bolstering its AI-generated conversation summary through the addition of live action items. As part of this feature, key pieces of information in meetings are tracked and revealed to users in real time.

This can benefit those who need to steer meeting topics in certain directions, or those who are attending meetings in an audience capacity. In the event of staff confusion, it also negates the need for time-consuming post-meeting follow-ups. 

“Team-focused Meeting GenAI represents a bold step forward in AI meeting intelligence,” said Sam Liang, co-founder and CEO of Otter.ai. 

“These features transcend AI note-taking and is a new paradigm that will empower Otter to proactively join live human conversations and intelligently chat with multiple human participants in real-time meetings - providing relevant insights, generating content, and identifying next steps to move work forward.”