Otter.ai, the AI note-taking tool, announced on Tuesday that it is adding support for 27 more languages. The company said this is the largest language expansion in its history.
Once the rollout is complete, Otter will support 31 languages in total. That means the platform supported four languages before this update.
Otter said the expansion will make its platform easier to use for international teams. The company is also preparing a feature that can keep transcribing when speakers switch languages in the same meeting.
The new languages are powered by speech models that Otter built itself. The company said the added languages run on these in-house models.
How Otter Built Its New Speech Models
Otter told TechCrunch that it trained the models using publicly available datasets. The company did not name the specific datasets it used.
Otter then worked with native-speaking volunteers to review transcripts. The volunteers checked how accurate the models were in each language.
This gave the company a human check on transcripts produced by its software. Otter did not say how many volunteers took part in the review.
Thirteen of the new languages are available now. They are Mandarin Chinese, Korean, German, Italian, Cantonese, Portuguese, Russian, Indonesian, Malay, Dutch, Turkish, Vietnamese and Polish.
The other 14 languages are coming soon. They include Swedish, Danish, Finnish, Arabic, Hindi, Thai, Hebrew, Norwegian, Greek, Macedonian, Persian, Czech, Hungarian and Romanian.
Otter did not give an exact release date for the second group. Once those arrive, the platform will cover languages across Europe, the Middle East and Asia.
Following Conversations Across Languages
The upcoming multilingual transcription feature will detect when speakers change languages. It will keep transcribing without users needing to adjust any settings.
For example, a call could start in English, move to Korean and then switch to Portuguese. Otter said its tool would follow the conversation the whole way through.
The company said the update is meant to help global teams. Language differences can make meetings and teamwork harder for these groups.
“Otter is breaking down language barriers so any company, no matter where they’re based, can build a system of record for the decisions for voice AI communication,” an Otter spokesperson told TechCrunch. The comment came alongside Tuesday’s announcement.
The language update follows Otter’s $320 million funding round from General Catalyst’s growth fund, reported in October. Since then, the company has continued to expand beyond transcription into other workplace AI tools.
One recent addition is Work Mode, which uses meeting history and connected apps to help users prepare for upcoming calls. It pulls in details from past customer conversations, open action items and recent Google Drive files.
Work Mode can also draw on notes from teammates who held similar calls. This gives users more background before a meeting begins.
Otter also recently launched Live Assist, which offers real-time coaching during meetings. The tool analyzes the conversation and makes suggestions based on what has already been discussed and what is happening in the moment.
