Transcription service Otter now lets users pay for access to older recordings

Otter, a US-based company that offers speech to text transcription services using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), has made some changes to its offerings for free and paid customers.

The company has said that free users would no longer have access to their entire back catalogue of recordings. Instead, they will only be able to access the most recent 25. The rest will be ‘archived’. That said, those will still exist on Otter’s servers, but users will either have to delete other conversations to access them, or pay to upgrade to Otter’s ‘pro’ plan. 

Generally, the automated transcription service firm lowers its features, by reducing the number of audio imports users can perform and also the length of audio they can transcribe each month. This has given new users free access to new tools. This will not be the case when the new plan is in place. 

The changes to the service will be applicable from September 27, so the company has advised that “any free users with more than 25 registrations may want to download their back catalogue before then”. 

Thereafter, free users may still be able to access these recordings, say, by downloading first and then deleting the audio files one by one, but it will be a more complicated process, the company said. 

Otter has also introduced an FAQ detailing the changes it has made in its pricing structure and it is different from the existing one. The page also mentioned why it needs to push more people onto its paid plan after offering free services. 

Besides, Otter is offering tips and tricks on its website. This includes access to an auto-join feature for meetings and AI-generated summaries of recordings for free. According to the company, these features were first added to paid users earlier this year, as part of Otter’s plan to position itself “not just as a transcription tool”, but also as an “all-purpose work centre”.