AI incident ·
Otter.ai Notetaker Allegedly Recorded Meeting Conversations Without Participants' Informed Consent and Used Data for AI Training
On this page 6 sections
In brief
An AI system built by Otter.Ai and Ai Transcription Technology Developers and deployed by Otter.Ai Users, Otter.Ai and 1 other allegedly harmed Privacy, People Recorded Without Consent and 3 others.
- Risk domain
- Not classified
- Occurred
- Coverage
- 5 reports
What happened
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.
Laws on record for this risk area
No instrument on record yet covers this risk area where it happened. See the open queue.
Matched from the record's risk category and country to the instruments in effect recorded here: a law listed covers the area, which is not a finding that it applies to this incident. A reviewer can correct the match in the repository (data/external/incident_overrides.yaml).
News reports (4)
Titles link to the original publisher; report text is not reproduced here.
Who was involved
- Alleged deployer
- Otter.Ai Users, Otter.Ai, Ai Transcription Tool Users
- Alleged developer
- Otter.Ai, Ai Transcription Technology Developers
- Alleged harmed party
- Privacy, People Recorded Without Consent, Otter.Ai Users, Justin Brewer, Employees
Classification (MIT AI Risk Repository taxonomy)
- Risk domain
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- Risk subdomain
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- Causal entity
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- Intent
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- Timing
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- Harm level
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- Sectors
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- Countries
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Source record: incident #1650 on the AI Incident Database · all 5 reports