Description: In February 2025, Otter.ai's Notetaker reportedly recorded and transcribed a Zoom conversation involving Justin Brewer, a San Jacinto, California resident who was not an Otter account holder, without his informed consent. Brewer later alleged that Otter obtained and retained his meeting communications and used captured data to train its speech-recognition and machine-learning systems.
Editor Notes: 02/24/2025 is the incident ID date; the incident ID itself was created 08/20/2026. See a copy of the complaint here: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/26052769-otter-complaint/.
Entities
View all entitiesAlleged: Otter.ai and AI transcription technology developers developed an AI system deployed by Otter.ai users , Otter.ai and AI transcription tool users, which harmed Otter.ai users , Privacy , People recorded without consent , Justin Brewer and Employees.
Alleged implicated AI systems: Otter Notetaker and AI transcription tools
Incident Stats
Incident ID
1650
Report Count
4
Incident Date
2025-02-24
Editors
Daniel Atherton
Incident Reports
Reports Timeline
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Otter.ai is a Mountain View, Calif.-based tech company that uses artificial intelligence to generate speech-to-text transcriptions. It has become a popular tool for transcribing virtual office meetings.
A federal lawsuit seeking class-actio…
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The complaint filed in California district court says the popular transcription service records users and uses their voices and data to train its models without consent.
Otter.ai and other call recording, note-taking apps like Read.ai and e…
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Justin Brewer filed a class action lawsuit against Otter.ai, Inc. on August 15, 2025, alleging the company violated federal and California privacy laws through its AI-powered meeting assistant. According to court documents filed in the Nort…
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Highlights
- Chamberlain v. Granola, Inc., No. 3:26-cv-07926 (N.D. Cal. July 30, 2026) joins a line of cases that includes class actions against Otter.ai and Fireflies.ai, other AI note-taking providers. Together, this line of cases highligh…
Variants
A "variant" is an AI incident similar to a known case—it has the same causes, harms, and AI system. Instead of listing it separately, we group it under the first reported incident. Unlike other incidents, variants do not need to have been reported outside the AIID. Learn more from the research paper.
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