Andrew Heinzman
Tired of taking notes during video meetings? Otter.ai, the popular service that automatically transcribes lectures and interviews, now offers a browser extension that adds captions and transcriptions to Google Meet. The extension works on Chromium-based browsers (Chrome, Edge, Opera) and includes collaborative editing features for your whole team.
Otter.ai uses a simple pop-up interface to show live captions and an editable live transcriptions for your chat. Participants using the extension can highlight transcribed words in real time, or even add notes to the transcription for later. And because Otter.ai transcriptions are shareable, it’s easy to fill in those who missed the meeting or send notes to team members who aren’t using the Otter.ai plugin.
While Google Meet already has a baked-in live captioning tool, Otter.ai could stand as a better option for those who are hearing impaired thanks to its automatic-correction and keyword-recognition tools. If the AI realizes that it misunderstood a word, it will actually go back in the transcript to fix its mistake. Feeding the AI some keywords before the meeting can also improve accuracy, as it won’t confuse those keywords with common, similar-sounding language.
While Otter.ai is usually a paid service (its Zoom extension costs $20 a month), the company’s Google Meet extension is free for an undefined “introductory” period. You can download the extension now for use with Chrome, Edge, Opera, and other Chromium-based browsers.
