7 ms·

Class-action suit claims Otter AI records private work conversations

144 points by nsedlet 1y ago

septemberagain 1y ago
Tell HN: Otter.ai bot recording meetings without consent (2022) - 176 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32751071 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32751071
blitzar 1y ago
I cant believe I am going to say this - but I am on the Ai company side. They recorded the call and sent it to all participants. Its not their fault the users are idiots.
- brendang_sd 1y ago
  That’s the problem though, getting the email with a copy of the recording may be the unwitting participants first indication that the call was recorded without their knowledge or consent. Otters defense is that it’s up to their users to inform other participants and get their consent where necessary, the claim of the lawsuit is that Otter is deliberately making a product which does not make it obvious that the call is being recorded, and by default does not send a pre-meeting notice that it will be joining and recording.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - athenot 1y ago
    I remember being on sensitive zoom calls and seeing Otter.ai join. Had to track down which person was using it, and even they were clueless as to how it got there, and the client kept rejoining despite the user trying to stop it. I've never used this service so I don't know if the user was being particularly clueless or if some dark pattern was at play; I suspect it's probably a little bit of both.
    - brendang_sd 1y ago
      You knew what to look for, and were presumably logged into a device which showed you participants... now imagine if you were on the go, or not very technical so joined from a phone using a phone # and a meeting code... you'd never see it or be aware. I contend Otter knows exactly what they are doing and hopefully this lawsuit gets them to get a bit more transparent and law abiding.
  - protonbob 1y ago
    If it is just a tool then a tape recorder company should be liable as well. It doesn't do any sort of notice or make it obvious that someone is being recorded.
    - brendang_sd 1y ago
      If the tape recorder were to automatically start recording whenever a meeting started and silently add itself to physical rooms unexpectedly... you might have a point. The tape recorder manufacturer also doesn’t claim the right to permanently own anything it’s users record, with or without permission.
- matthewdgreen 1y ago
  I mean, the standard product experience here is that everyone gets a visual or audio warning that the meeting is being recorded.
  - ted_dunning 1y ago
    You aren't talking about the standard experience product experience with Otter.ai, are you? Hard to tell. That's the crux of the article.
    - matthewdgreen 1y ago
      I’m talking about the standard product experience for meeting recordings, using the built-in tools. Why would you do something different?
  - cj 1y ago
    Are you sure? I’ve used Otter to record convos without it joining the meeting. Notion’s AI meeting recording also works without any participants being alerted. Same with Limitless.ai (check out the limitless pendant for the most extreme example of no consent recording) Most of these AI meeting recording services make it easy to silently/secretly record. No consent seems to be the default UX.
    - matthewdgreen 1y ago
      No, I meant the standard product experience for meeting recording tools.
      - cj 1y ago
        Right. The standard UX does not include anything that would indicate to other attendees that the meeting is being recorded.
        matthewdgreen 1y ago
        I’m still not sure what we’re talking about. When I turn on recording in Zoom, a booming voice announces that “this meeting is being recorded” to all participants. In older conferencing systems you’d get similar recorded warnings and sometimes loud beeps every so often.
DaiPlusPlus 1y ago
Assuming the courts simplify Otter AI down to being a glorified call recording and transcribing tool (because the fact it's "AI" isn't really relevant here w.r.t. privacy/one/two-party-consent rules then doesn't the legal responsibility here lie with whichever person added Otter AI to group-calls without informing the other members? ---- EDIT: So the crux of the matter is whether-or-not having Otter AI automatically join meetings via their Slack/Zoom/etc integrations is by-itself legally wrong - or not: > "In fact, if the meeting host is an Otter accountholder who has integrated their relevant Google Meet, Zoom, or Microsoft Teams accounts with Otter, an Otter Notetaker may join the meeting without obtaining the affirmative consent from any meeting participant, including the host," the lawsuit alleges. "What Otter has done is use its Otter Notetaker meeting assistant to record, transcribe, and utilize the contents of conversations without the Class members' informed consent." I'm surprised the NPR article doesn't touch on the possible liability of whoever added Otter in the first place - surely the buck stops there?
- gruez 1y ago
  >doesn't the legal responsibility here lie with whichever person added Otter AI to group-calls without informing the other members IANAL but companies providing a product has certain responsibilities too, especially when they're intended to be used for a given purpose (ie. recording meetings with other people on it). Most call recording software I come across have a recording notice that can't be disabled, presumably to avoid lawsuits like this. >EDIT: So the crux of the matter is whether-or-not having Otter AI automatically join meetings via their Slack/Zoom/etc integrations is by-itself legally wrong - or not: Note the preceding paragraph also notes that even when the integrations aren't used, otter only obtains consent from the meeting host. In all-party consent states that's clearly not sufficient. >because the fact it's "AI" isn't really relevant here Again, IANAL, but "recording" laws might not apply if they're merely transcribing the audio? To take an extreme case, it's (probably) legal to hire a stenographer to sit next to you on meetings and transcribe everything on the call, even if you don't tell any other participants. Otter is a note-taking app, so they might have been in the clear if they weren't recording for AI training.
  - boothby 1y ago
nkotov 1y ago
Wait until they find out about Granola AI
klabb3 1y ago
Before AI, you needed to trust the recipient and the provider (Gmail, Signal, WhatsApp, discord). You could at least make educated guesses about both for the risk profile. Such as: if someone leaks the code to this repo, it’s likely a collaborator or GitHub. Today, you invite someone to a private repo and the code gets exfiltrated by a collaborator running whatever AI tool simply by opening their IDE. Or you send someone an e2ee message on Signal but their AI reads the screen/text to summarize and now that message is exfiltrated. Yes, I know it’s ”nothing new” ”in principle this could happen because you don’t control the client”. But opsec is also about what happens when well-meaning participants being accomplices in data collection. I used to trust that my friends enough to not share our conversations. Now the default assumption is that text & media on even private messaging will be harvested. Personally I’m not ever giving keys to the kingdom to a remote data-hungry company, no matter how reputable. I’ll reconsider when local or self-hosted AI is available.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  > used to trust that my friends enough to not share our conversations. Now the default assumption is that text & media on even private messaging will be harvested I would seriously reëvaluate my trust level in a friend or colleague who installs a non-ADA screen reader on their phone. At least to the level of sharing anything sensitive.
  - buran77 1y ago
    What about when devices come with such a "feature" baked in? Android has Magic Cue, Windows has Recall. How long until they're opt-out, or "accidentally" enabled with an update, or just on at all times? And "sensitive" can be wherever details I want to share with that friend. It can be as benign as giving them an address or phone number, or maybe a medical diagnosis, or a crypto wallet number. Is your position that anyone who's not tech savvy enough to constantly fight the onslaught of shady business practices and dark patterns that most tech companies throw at them is not worthy of their friends' trust? For most people asking them to guarantee their own devices won't spy on them is a tall order.
xnx 1y ago
Why does Otter AI exist? Aren't those features built-in to videoconferencing now?
- jorts 1y ago
  Most of the ones built into the video conferencing solutions aren't as good.
  - nextworddev 1y ago
    Zoom is aight
bilekas 1y ago
> Last year, an AI researcher and engineer said Otter had recorded a Zoom meeting with investors, then shared with him a transcription of the chat including "intimate, confidential details" about a business discussed after he had left the meeting. Those portions of the conversation ended up killing a deal, I'm sorry but this is another example of not checking AI's work. Whatever about the excessive recording, that's one thing, but blindly trusting the AI's output and then using it blindly as a company document for a client is on you.
- kg 1y ago
  I checked the original tweet to try and understand this better and what appears to have happened is that Otter kept recording after he left and the VCs stayed on the call chatting (for hours, according to the tweet). This violates the assumption baked into the recording agent (all participants of the call have a right to a transcript of the whole call) by repurposing a scheduled meeting into a party line/just chatting sort of situation. You could fix this by training people not to use booked meetings this way but I'm not sure how realistic that is to do. I think it might be that services like Otter need to be adjusted to take into account that not every part of a meeting is of equal sensitivity. i.e. my HOA's monthly meetings have a private period for the board only and a public period for all residents. If Otter were used in this configuration, it would broadcast the exact details of those private discussions to the whole building, which might include board members discussing details that shouldn't be shared with everyone.
  - bilekas 1y ago
    > I think it might be that services like Otter need to be adjusted to take into account that not every part of a meeting is of equal sensitivity. One would like to think that a company transcribing company meetings of varying degrees of sensitivity would have the feature you're describing built into it. If nothing else other than the auditing process that's usually involved for new software. Maybe just those companies in a rush to adopt the latest AI tooling are not fully considering what they're doing.
    - 1y ago
cbm-vic-20 1y ago
I've been getting Otter AI ads on the various ad-supported streaming services I watch. The ad shows a scenario where a couple of people are tapped for a last-minute meeting, but they've got other things to attend to (lunch, PTO), and they just have Otter sit in their place in the meeting. I may be a dinosaur, but I was shocked at how casual they made this look (I know, it's just an ad), but I would be fired almost instantly at $ENTERPRISE if I did this. I almost looks like it's designed for corporate espionage.
- cj 1y ago
  This is not why or how 99% of people use Otter. If that’s implied in their marketing, then their marketing team is terrible.
jmort 1y ago
I think we should have an opt-out standard via a subsonic signal, like DO NOT TRACK in browsers. Then, it's on the vendors to intentionally ignore a clear signal. To that end, I've been working on opening sourcing https://dontrecord.me https://dontrecord.me as a side project. Putting together a fork of Whisper that will follow the opt-out signal, too. If anyone one wants to help, please connect.
Confiks 1y ago
A month ago a potential customer automatically included their Otter.ai meeting agent into a Teams call. The customer never turned up (he canceled the meeting somewhat later), but me and a colleague chatted a bit in the meeting. Then the Otter.ai meeting agent posted a link in the chat, from which it was clear that everything had been recorded, up to a complete video of the meeting with full facial imagery. As I'm a European citizen, I filed a GDPR removal request with them to remove all images of me from their servers. The email address that they list in their privacy policy [1] for GDPR requests immediately bounces and tells you to reply from an Otter.ai account (which I don't have). I was able to fill in a contact form on their website and I did receive replies via email after that. After a few emails back and forth, their position is that > You will need to reach out to the conversation owner directly to request to have your information deleted/removed. Audio and screenshots created by the user are under the control of the user, not Otter. > We are required by law to deny any request to delete personal information that may be contained within a recording or screenshot created by another user under the CCPA, Cal. Civil Code § 1798.145(k), which states in relevant part > “The rights afforded to consumers and the obligations imposed on the business in this title shall not adversely affect the rights and freedoms of other natural persons. A verifiable consumer request…to delete a consumer’s personal information pursuant to Section 1798.105…shall not extend to personal information about the consumer that belongs to, or the business maintains on behalf of, another natural person…[A] business is under no legal obligation under this title or any other provision of law to take any action under this title in the event of a dispute between or among persons claiming rights to personal information in the business’ possession.” Which is a ridiculous answer towards a European user, as the CCPA doesn't apply to me at all. Furthermore, I don't think the CCPA prohibits them at all in deleting my face from their servers, as the CCPA merely stipulates that I can't compel them under the CCPA. Otter.ai can perfectly decide this for themselves or be compelled under the GDPR to delete data, and their Terms and Conditions make it clear they may delete any user or data if they wish to do so. After these emails, and me threatening to file a lawsuit, "Andrew" from "Otter.ai Support Team" promised to escalate the matter to his manager, but I got ghosted after that: they simply stopped replying. So I'm going to file that lawsuit (a "verzoekschriftprocedure" under Dutch law) this week. It's going to be a very short complaint. [1] https://otter.ai/privacy-policy https://otter.ai/privacy-policy
nearysvoice 1y ago
Apparently, I am "inviting" Otter into very private work meetings and i don't even have an account. Someone else had it on a meeting and Otter took it upon itself to send notes to all people in the meeting...from "me". It said i was inviting them. i am being trolled by an ai bot and spreading it like a disease to others and i didn't even know it until i saw the invitation from me in a meeting i was in...and that's when i first learned it attached itself to me. This is like a virus and i am trying to figure out how to stop it.
stefanwlb 1y ago
[dead]

144 points by nsedlet 1y ago

Tell HN: Otter.ai bot recording meetings without consent (2022) - 176 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32751071 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32751071

blitzar 1y ago

I cant believe I am going to say this - but I am on the Ai company side. They recorded the call and sent it to all participants. Its not their fault the users are idiots.

brendang_sd 1y ago
That’s the problem though, getting the email with a copy of the recording may be the unwitting participants first indication that the call was recorded without their knowledge or consent. Otters defense is that it’s up to their users to inform other participants and get their consent where necessary, the claim of the lawsuit is that Otter is deliberately making a product which does not make it obvious that the call is being recorded, and by default does not send a pre-meeting notice that it will be joining and recording.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- athenot 1y ago
  I remember being on sensitive zoom calls and seeing Otter.ai join. Had to track down which person was using it, and even they were clueless as to how it got there, and the client kept rejoining despite the user trying to stop it. I've never used this service so I don't know if the user was being particularly clueless or if some dark pattern was at play; I suspect it's probably a little bit of both.
  - brendang_sd 1y ago
    You knew what to look for, and were presumably logged into a device which showed you participants... now imagine if you were on the go, or not very technical so joined from a phone using a phone # and a meeting code... you'd never see it or be aware. I contend Otter knows exactly what they are doing and hopefully this lawsuit gets them to get a bit more transparent and law abiding.
- protonbob 1y ago
  If it is just a tool then a tape recorder company should be liable as well. It doesn't do any sort of notice or make it obvious that someone is being recorded.
  - brendang_sd 1y ago
    If the tape recorder were to automatically start recording whenever a meeting started and silently add itself to physical rooms unexpectedly... you might have a point. The tape recorder manufacturer also doesn’t claim the right to permanently own anything it’s users record, with or without permission.
matthewdgreen 1y ago
I mean, the standard product experience here is that everyone gets a visual or audio warning that the meeting is being recorded.
- ted_dunning 1y ago
  You aren't talking about the standard experience product experience with Otter.ai, are you? Hard to tell. That's the crux of the article.
  - matthewdgreen 1y ago
    I’m talking about the standard product experience for meeting recordings, using the built-in tools. Why would you do something different?
- cj 1y ago
  Are you sure? I’ve used Otter to record convos without it joining the meeting. Notion’s AI meeting recording also works without any participants being alerted. Same with Limitless.ai (check out the limitless pendant for the most extreme example of no consent recording) Most of these AI meeting recording services make it easy to silently/secretly record. No consent seems to be the default UX.
  - matthewdgreen 1y ago
    No, I meant the standard product experience for meeting recording tools.
    - cj 1y ago
      Right. The standard UX does not include anything that would indicate to other attendees that the meeting is being recorded.
      - matthewdgreen 1y ago
        I’m still not sure what we’re talking about. When I turn on recording in Zoom, a booming voice announces that “this meeting is being recorded” to all participants. In older conferencing systems you’d get similar recorded warnings and sometimes loud beeps every so often.

DaiPlusPlus 1y ago

Assuming the courts simplify Otter AI down to being a glorified call recording and transcribing tool (because the fact it's "AI" isn't really relevant here w.r.t. privacy/one/two-party-consent rules then doesn't the legal responsibility here lie with whichever person added Otter AI to group-calls without informing the other members? ---- EDIT: So the crux of the matter is whether-or-not having Otter AI automatically join meetings via their Slack/Zoom/etc integrations is by-itself legally wrong - or not: > "In fact, if the meeting host is an Otter accountholder who has integrated their relevant Google Meet, Zoom, or Microsoft Teams accounts with Otter, an Otter Notetaker may join the meeting without obtaining the affirmative consent from any meeting participant, including the host," the lawsuit alleges. "What Otter has done is use its Otter Notetaker meeting assistant to record, transcribe, and utilize the contents of conversations without the Class members' informed consent." I'm surprised the NPR article doesn't touch on the possible liability of whoever added Otter in the first place - surely the buck stops there?

gruez 1y ago
>doesn't the legal responsibility here lie with whichever person added Otter AI to group-calls without informing the other members IANAL but companies providing a product has certain responsibilities too, especially when they're intended to be used for a given purpose (ie. recording meetings with other people on it). Most call recording software I come across have a recording notice that can't be disabled, presumably to avoid lawsuits like this. >EDIT: So the crux of the matter is whether-or-not having Otter AI automatically join meetings via their Slack/Zoom/etc integrations is by-itself legally wrong - or not: Note the preceding paragraph also notes that even when the integrations aren't used, otter only obtains consent from the meeting host. In all-party consent states that's clearly not sufficient. >because the fact it's "AI" isn't really relevant here Again, IANAL, but "recording" laws might not apply if they're merely transcribing the audio? To take an extreme case, it's (probably) legal to hire a stenographer to sit next to you on meetings and transcribe everything on the call, even if you don't tell any other participants. Otter is a note-taking app, so they might have been in the clear if they weren't recording for AI training.
- boothby 1y ago

nkotov 1y ago

Wait until they find out about Granola AI

klabb3 1y ago

Before AI, you needed to trust the recipient and the provider (Gmail, Signal, WhatsApp, discord). You could at least make educated guesses about both for the risk profile. Such as: if someone leaks the code to this repo, it’s likely a collaborator or GitHub. Today, you invite someone to a private repo and the code gets exfiltrated by a collaborator running whatever AI tool simply by opening their IDE. Or you send someone an e2ee message on Signal but their AI reads the screen/text to summarize and now that message is exfiltrated. Yes, I know it’s ”nothing new” ”in principle this could happen because you don’t control the client”. But opsec is also about what happens when well-meaning participants being accomplices in data collection. I used to trust that my friends enough to not share our conversations. Now the default assumption is that text & media on even private messaging will be harvested. Personally I’m not ever giving keys to the kingdom to a remote data-hungry company, no matter how reputable. I’ll reconsider when local or self-hosted AI is available.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
JumpCrisscross 1y ago
> used to trust that my friends enough to not share our conversations. Now the default assumption is that text & media on even private messaging will be harvested I would seriously reëvaluate my trust level in a friend or colleague who installs a non-ADA screen reader on their phone. At least to the level of sharing anything sensitive.
- buran77 1y ago
  What about when devices come with such a "feature" baked in? Android has Magic Cue, Windows has Recall. How long until they're opt-out, or "accidentally" enabled with an update, or just on at all times? And "sensitive" can be wherever details I want to share with that friend. It can be as benign as giving them an address or phone number, or maybe a medical diagnosis, or a crypto wallet number. Is your position that anyone who's not tech savvy enough to constantly fight the onslaught of shady business practices and dark patterns that most tech companies throw at them is not worthy of their friends' trust? For most people asking them to guarantee their own devices won't spy on them is a tall order.

xnx 1y ago

Why does Otter AI exist? Aren't those features built-in to videoconferencing now?

jorts 1y ago
Most of the ones built into the video conferencing solutions aren't as good.
- nextworddev 1y ago
  Zoom is aight

bilekas 1y ago

> Last year, an AI researcher and engineer said Otter had recorded a Zoom meeting with investors, then shared with him a transcription of the chat including "intimate, confidential details" about a business discussed after he had left the meeting. Those portions of the conversation ended up killing a deal, I'm sorry but this is another example of not checking AI's work. Whatever about the excessive recording, that's one thing, but blindly trusting the AI's output and then using it blindly as a company document for a client is on you.

kg 1y ago
I checked the original tweet to try and understand this better and what appears to have happened is that Otter kept recording after he left and the VCs stayed on the call chatting (for hours, according to the tweet). This violates the assumption baked into the recording agent (all participants of the call have a right to a transcript of the whole call) by repurposing a scheduled meeting into a party line/just chatting sort of situation. You could fix this by training people not to use booked meetings this way but I'm not sure how realistic that is to do. I think it might be that services like Otter need to be adjusted to take into account that not every part of a meeting is of equal sensitivity. i.e. my HOA's monthly meetings have a private period for the board only and a public period for all residents. If Otter were used in this configuration, it would broadcast the exact details of those private discussions to the whole building, which might include board members discussing details that shouldn't be shared with everyone.
- bilekas 1y ago
  > I think it might be that services like Otter need to be adjusted to take into account that not every part of a meeting is of equal sensitivity. One would like to think that a company transcribing company meetings of varying degrees of sensitivity would have the feature you're describing built into it. If nothing else other than the auditing process that's usually involved for new software. Maybe just those companies in a rush to adopt the latest AI tooling are not fully considering what they're doing.
  - 1y ago

cbm-vic-20 1y ago

I've been getting Otter AI ads on the various ad-supported streaming services I watch. The ad shows a scenario where a couple of people are tapped for a last-minute meeting, but they've got other things to attend to (lunch, PTO), and they just have Otter sit in their place in the meeting. I may be a dinosaur, but I was shocked at how casual they made this look (I know, it's just an ad), but I would be fired almost instantly at $ENTERPRISE if I did this. I almost looks like it's designed for corporate espionage.

cj 1y ago
This is not why or how 99% of people use Otter. If that’s implied in their marketing, then their marketing team is terrible.

jmort 1y ago

I think we should have an opt-out standard via a subsonic signal, like DO NOT TRACK in browsers. Then, it's on the vendors to intentionally ignore a clear signal. To that end, I've been working on opening sourcing https://dontrecord.me https://dontrecord.me as a side project. Putting together a fork of Whisper that will follow the opt-out signal, too. If anyone one wants to help, please connect.

Confiks 1y ago

A month ago a potential customer automatically included their Otter.ai meeting agent into a Teams call. The customer never turned up (he canceled the meeting somewhat later), but me and a colleague chatted a bit in the meeting. Then the Otter.ai meeting agent posted a link in the chat, from which it was clear that everything had been recorded, up to a complete video of the meeting with full facial imagery. As I'm a European citizen, I filed a GDPR removal request with them to remove all images of me from their servers. The email address that they list in their privacy policy [1] for GDPR requests immediately bounces and tells you to reply from an Otter.ai account (which I don't have). I was able to fill in a contact form on their website and I did receive replies via email after that. After a few emails back and forth, their position is that > You will need to reach out to the conversation owner directly to request to have your information deleted/removed. Audio and screenshots created by the user are under the control of the user, not Otter. > We are required by law to deny any request to delete personal information that may be contained within a recording or screenshot created by another user under the CCPA, Cal. Civil Code § 1798.145(k), which states in relevant part > “The rights afforded to consumers and the obligations imposed on the business in this title shall not adversely affect the rights and freedoms of other natural persons. A verifiable consumer request…to delete a consumer’s personal information pursuant to Section 1798.105…shall not extend to personal information about the consumer that belongs to, or the business maintains on behalf of, another natural person…[A] business is under no legal obligation under this title or any other provision of law to take any action under this title in the event of a dispute between or among persons claiming rights to personal information in the business’ possession.” Which is a ridiculous answer towards a European user, as the CCPA doesn't apply to me at all. Furthermore, I don't think the CCPA prohibits them at all in deleting my face from their servers, as the CCPA merely stipulates that I can't compel them under the CCPA. Otter.ai can perfectly decide this for themselves or be compelled under the GDPR to delete data, and their Terms and Conditions make it clear they may delete any user or data if they wish to do so. After these emails, and me threatening to file a lawsuit, "Andrew" from "Otter.ai Support Team" promised to escalate the matter to his manager, but I got ghosted after that: they simply stopped replying. So I'm going to file that lawsuit (a "verzoekschriftprocedure" under Dutch law) this week. It's going to be a very short complaint. [1] https://otter.ai/privacy-policy https://otter.ai/privacy-policy

nearysvoice 1y ago

Apparently, I am "inviting" Otter into very private work meetings and i don't even have an account. Someone else had it on a meeting and Otter took it upon itself to send notes to all people in the meeting...from "me". It said i was inviting them. i am being trolled by an ai bot and spreading it like a disease to others and i didn't even know it until i saw the invitation from me in a meeting i was in...and that's when i first learned it attached itself to me. This is like a virus and i am trying to figure out how to stop it.

stefanwlb 1y ago

[dead]