Is Otter AI private? What Otter.ai records, trains on, and shares

The Morse teamPublished November 1, 20268 min read

As of October 2026, Otter AI is private from strangers but not from Otter.ai itself: Otter keeps your recordings and transcripts on its servers until you delete them, trains its own AI on de-identified audio and on transcripts "which may contain Personal Information," and its Notetaker can join every calendar meeting with a video link on its own once you connect a calendar, which Otter's workspace settings list as the default (Otter privacy policy, Otter help center). Whether Otter is private for the other people in your meeting is the question at the center of a federal class action filed in August 2025, whose claims are allegations, not findings.

We read Otter's privacy policy (effective June 16, 2026), its terms of service (effective September 19, 2025), its Privacy & Security page, its pricing page, and 17 of its help center articles on October 24, 2026. Every fact below links to the Otter page it came from. Otter deserves credit for letting any meeting guest, with or without an Otter account, remove the Notetaker by typing "stop otter" in the meeting chat (Otter).

Otter.ai privacy settings at a glance

Personal Basic, Pro, and Business accounts, read October 24, 2026.

Does Otter AI train on your recordings?

Yes, on de-identified audio and on transcripts. Otter's privacy policy lists "training our proprietary AI technology on de-identified audio recordings and on transcriptions (which may contain Personal Information)" among its uses of your data (Otter). The policy's legal basis for that use is "Consent or Legitimate interests." Otter's Privacy & Security page says it uses "a proprietary method to de-identify user data before training," and it doesn't describe the method (Otter).

The terms of service add a broader license. They let Otter use "aggregated and/or deidentified data derived from Data or use of the Services" for "machine learning and training" (Otter terms).

The outside AI companies behind Otter's features don't train on your data, Otter says. Its Privacy & Security page says "No customer data will be used to train or improve our AI Service Provider(s)' artificial intelligence models" and that those providers "do not store customer data sent through the API" (Otter).

Enterprise is the exception. Otter's admin guide says "Enterprise workspaces are opted out of AI model training" by default (Otter).

Do humans at Otter listen to your recordings?

Otter's own pages answer this two ways. The Privacy & Security page says training "is automatic and as such audio recordings and transcripts are not manually reviewed by a human" (Otter). The help center says that choosing Allow sharing gives "Otter and its third-party service provider(s) permission to access all of your conversations in your account for training and product improvement, including human review" (Otter). The privacy policy also lists "data labeling service providers" that "use the data we share to create training and evaluation data" (Otter).

The two fit together only if the human review happens under that setting, and the setting is easy to turn on by accident. Ticking the "Allow Otter…" box when you rate one transcript changes your whole account to Allow sharing, and Otter says you can't grant or revoke it for just one conversation (Otter). If you haven't chosen yet, a collaborator on a conversation you shared can opt that conversation in.

To check it, open Account Settings, then Meetings, scroll to Feedback and Training, and set Help improve Otter to Don't allow sharing. Otter says that removes access to all past conversations for training.

Does Otter join meetings on its own?

Yes, once you connect a calendar. Otter's recording permissions guide lists "Meetings with a video conference link (default)" first among the workspace auto-join settings (Otter). With that setting, Notetaker "will automatically join all calendar events with a valid Zoom, Google Meet, or Microsoft Teams meeting URL" (Otter). It will also "record, transcribe, provide a summary, and share your conversations."

Otter's Privacy & Security page describes it differently: "Otter starts recording only when you or a meeting participant presses Record or invites Otter to your meeting" (Otter). A connected calendar counts as that invitation for every future meeting with a link.

To stop it, go to Integrations, then the Meetings tab, open Default auto-join settings, and choose Meetings I manually select (Otter). Events you switched on one by one keep their own setting, so check your calendar afterward.

Who gets your Otter transcripts?

Whoever your sharing settings name, plus Otter's vendors. Otter's auto-share setting can send notes to "All event guests," "Same domain guests," "Workspace members," or nobody ("Don't share") (Otter). With "Same domain guests," guests at your company's domain get the notes "regardless of whether they have an Otter account." To keep notes to yourself, choose Don't Share-keep my notes private under Default audience for shared notes (Otter).

The privacy policy lists cloud, analytics, data labeling, and AI service providers among those that receive your data (Otter). It names Amazon Web Services for storage. Otter's help center says that data sits in AWS S3 with AES-256 server-side encryption (Otter).

Otter's pages also disagree on selling. The Privacy & Security page says "We do not sell your data" (Otter). The privacy policy says Otter discloses device, cookie, and location data to advertising and analytics partners, and that "some of these data disclosures may broadly be considered a 'sale'" under U.S. state laws (Otter). Neither says recordings or transcripts go to advertisers.

How do you delete Otter recordings for good?

Delete the conversation, then empty the Trash. A deleted conversation is "immediately unshared from all users and Channels" and sits in Trash for 30 days (Otter). Empty Trash Now deletes it at once, and Otter says the conversation and its data are then removed from its servers. Only the owner can delete a shared conversation.

Downgrading doesn't delete anything. On the free Basic plan, conversations past your 25 most recent are archived, and archived conversations "are not automatically deleted after a certain amount of time" (Otter).

Deleting your account removes your conversations, but Otter keeps "certain limited account information, such as email" (Otter). The Delete account option appears only when you're the only user in your workspace.

Otter AI lawsuit: what's alleged and where it stands

On August 15, 2025, Justin Brewer filed a proposed class action against Otter.ai in the Northern District of California, case 5:25-cv-06911 (complaint as filed). The complaint alleges that Otter "does not obtain prior consent, express or otherwise," from people in meetings where Notetaker runs. It alleges that, on default settings, Otter sent no pre-meeting notice to participants. It brings claims under the federal wiretap law, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and the California Invasion of Privacy Act, among others.

These are allegations, and no court has found them true. As of October 24, 2026, CourtListener lists the case as In re Otter.AI Privacy Litigation, with no termination date (CourtListener). We couldn't load the docket entries that day, so we can't report rulings on any motion.

Otter's help center now spells out what notice it gives. Notetaker appears as a named participant and posts a chat message with a link to the live transcript, and pre-recording emails go out "when enabled" (Otter). A click-to-agree recording permissions page exists for Microsoft Teams, through Otter for Outlook, and it requires the Microsoft Enterprise license.

Is Otter safer on a paid plan?

Only Enterprise changes the privacy rules. As of October 24, 2026, Pro lists at $16.99 per user a month billed monthly and Business at $30 before a first-three-months discount, while Enterprise is sold through a demo (Otter pricing). Custom data retention and HIPAA compliance appear only in the Enterprise column. Otter says it is "not a HIPAA-covered entity by default" and needs a signed Business Associate Agreement first (Otter).

For legal demands, Otter says it "will not turn over any information about a customer without a legal process compelling Otter to do so" and "intends to inform users promptly" unless the law prevents it (Otter). Our guide to whether AI chats can be subpoenaed covers how stored conversations reach court.

How Morse keeps your notes off an AI company's servers

Every risk above starts with a recording and a transcript stored in an Otter account, where a feedback checkbox, a calendar connection, or a sharing default decides who else gets them. Morse doesn't record meetings. It's an AI chat for what comes after, like the follow-up you draft or the question you'd rather not ask in a shared workspace, and it keeps those chats in your browser, encrypted, not on Morse's servers.

• E2EE, for meeting notes no one else should read. Your browser checks the secure enclave's proof that it's genuine, then encrypts your message so only that enclave can read it, and Morse's servers relay text they can't read. This rests on the enclave hardware and attestation working as designed. E2EE runs open-weight models and comes with Pro, at $19 a month.
• Private, for drafts you'd rather no host kept. New chats start in Private. Morse has zero data retention agreements with its inference, search, and other providers, so they keep nothing, and where a provider confirms that on each reply, Morse checks it.
• Anonymous, to use GPT, Claude, or Gemini without your name on it. Our proxy strips your account, email, and IP address. The provider sees the message without knowing it's you, and may keep it for a limited time to check for abuse under its own policy, so leave client names out of the text.

There's no "Help improve" setting to find, because Morse doesn't train AI on your content, sell your data, or show ads (Morse privacy policy). There's no Trash holding a copy for 30 days: clearing your browser or deleting your account removes your chats for good, and Morse can't recover them, so keep a copy of anything you need. And because we don't store chats, we usually have very little to give authorities. For how other assistants compare on training, see which AI companies train on your data, and for the wider picture, are AI chats private.

So is Otter private enough for you?

• Training: set Help improve Otter to Don't allow sharing, and leave the "Allow Otter…" box unticked when you rate a transcript. Morse doesn't train AI on your content.
• Auto-join: switch to Meetings I manually select, and turn on Send pre-recording emails so guests hear about it first.
• Sharing: set Default audience for shared notes to Don't share, then check events you changed one by one.
• Deletion: delete, then Empty Trash Now. On Morse, your chat history is stored only in your browser.

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