LOS ALTOS, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--AISense announced today it has launched Otter, the first mobile and web app that empowers users to store, search and share voice conversations the same way that they manage email or other text communications. This follows the Series A funding announcement in November 2017 led by Horizons Ventures with participation from Tim Draper's DraperAssociates and DraperDragon Fund, David Cheriton, the first Google investor, and Bridgewater Associates, among others.
The announcement furthers the company's mission to make all voice conversations accessible and searchable through Ambient Voice Intelligence™. Otter will be available on the web, iOS and Android. The app will be free and a subscription fee will be added for a premium tier in subsequent iterations.
Otter gives people the power to store, search and share the details of all important conversations without any limits or constraints. Users simply turn on the app when a conversation starts and it continues capturing speech in the background until the conversation ends. Unlike voice assistant apps, such as Amazon Alexa, Apple Siri, or Google Assistant, users don't need to use voice commands to initiate Otter. The service is also not limited to making sense of short utterances from a single person. Instead, Otter processes natural, longform conversations among multiple participants.
Otter unlocks a new dimension of verbal conversations through an elegant integration of AI and user-centric design, so participants can forget about taking notes and trust that a much better shared transcript and summary will be automatically generated.
Features include:
- Automatic speech recognition: Otter uses AISense's proprietary, AI-powered speech recognition technology that is optimized for conversations with multiple participants and challenging acoustic environments.
- Speaker separation and identification: The app identifies when different speakers take turns and identifies individual voices in a conversation, in the same way that AI recognizes faces in photos on social media.
- Deep content search: Users can search by keyword to recall snippets of all of their conversations that are stored in Otter.
- Groups: Content can be quickly shared within the Otter app with individuals or team members in real time.
- Playback: Text and audio are synchronized on playback and users can quickly jump to any point in the audio recording by clicking the transcribed text.
In the workplace, Otter will allow people to focus and untether themselves from distracting devices and note-taking during meetings, calls, and video conferences. There are myriad potential consumer applications, such as capturing notes from school lectures, conversations with financial advisers, healthcare providers, or others.
Chief Executive Officer Sam Liang founded AISense in 2016 with a plan to transform voice conversations. A visionary developer, Liang is best known for pioneering the iconic blue dot as tech lead for Google's location services. He successfully sold his last startup, Alohar Mobile, to Alibaba. Now, with top talent from Google, Facebook, Yahoo!, Nuance, and a number of Ph.Ds and computer scientists from Stanford, Duke, MIT, Cambridge and other top schools, AISense is harnessing advanced artificial intelligence to bring new life to human-to-human conversations.
"The ability to remember, search, and share your voice conversations is the next frontier in collaboration. Otter empowers the user to use AI for everyday conversations, so they can focus on what is being said and forget about taking notes," said CEO Sam Liang.
On average, people say around 16,500 words every day. Though people can search for emails sent years ago, there is no easy way to search their verbal conversations. AISense aims to make those words accessible and searchable in the same way texts and emails are now, and to provide digestible summaries of what was said and what was agreed by various participants.
Download Otter from the Apple App Store, Google Play Store, or on the web at otter.ai.
About AISense
Founded in 2016, AISense is on a mission to transform everyday voice conversations through Ambient Voice Intelligence™, a proprietary technology that gives people the power to store, search, share and analyze their voice conversations the same way they can with emails and text messages. The startup is based in Silicon Valley with a team of experienced Ph.Ds and engineers from Google, Facebook, Yahoo! and Nuance. To date it has raised $13 million in funding. Follow AISense on Twitter and learn more at aisense.com.
