Otters defense is that it’s up to their users to inform other participants and get their consent where necessary, the claim of the lawsuit is that Otter is deliberately making a product which does not make it obvious that the call is being recorded, and by default does not send a pre-meeting notice that it will be joining and recording.
I've never used this service so I don't know if the user was being particularly clueless or if some dark pattern was at play; I suspect it's probably a little bit of both.
The tape recorder manufacturer also doesn’t claim the right to permanently own anything it’s users record, with or without permission.
I’ve used Otter to record convos without it joining the meeting.
Notion’s AI meeting recording also works without any participants being alerted. Same with Limitless.ai (check out the limitless pendant for the most extreme example of no consent recording)
Most of these AI meeting recording services make it easy to silently/secretly record. No consent seems to be the default UX.
That's the crux of the article.
They recorded the call and sent it to all participants. Its not their fault the users are idiots.