Answers

Does Otter.ai join the meeting as a bot?

Yes. Otter.ai joins your call as a visible bot — an “Otter.ai Notetaker” participant appears in the attendee list and everyone can see it's recording. Reline works the opposite way: it captures your microphone and the meeting's system audio locally on your own device, so no bot ever appears in the call.

Short answer

Yes. Otter.ai joins your call as a visible bot — an “Otter.ai Notetaker” participant appears in the attendee list and everyone can see it's recording. Reline works the opposite way: it captures your microphone and the meeting's system audio locally on your own device, so no bot ever appears in the call.

The details

  • On Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams, Otter's assistant requests to join and is listed as a participant, which can feel intrusive in client or candidate calls.
  • Reline never sends anything into the meeting — capture happens on your Mac, Windows, or Linux machine, the way a screen recording does.
  • You still get a speaker-attributed transcript and a citation-backed summary; transcription and AI run securely in the cloud (Reline doesn't claim on-device AI).
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