Artificial intelligence has transformed numerous manual tasks into automated ones, and transcription process is one of the biggest beneficiaries. By utilising AI transcription technology, the amount of time, energy and expertise required to transcript an audio material are now practically prohibitive.
Transcription is the process of converting speech in an audio or audio-visual file into written text. It provides word-for-word records of events such as meetings, virtual conference calls and academic research. Text transcriptions allow viewers to read and fully comprehend audio in a text format. Integrated with AI technology, AI transcription relies on automatic-speech-recognition machine to “listen in”, take the spoken word and translate it into text seamlessly. The machine interprets different sounds that make up human speech and match those sounds to the corresponding word in its extensive database in different languages. It improves its accuracy constantly by continuous data feed. Examples include auto-captions on YouTube and talk-to-text on smartphones.
Benefits on AI transcription
Speed
The speed of AI transcription is definitely its key selling point. Instead of the cumbersome and time-consuming manual transcription process, it provides near-instant response even for a lengthy document such as political speech, lecture or podcast.
Timestamping
Timestamping is usually offered as an added advantage to an automated transcription. It helps users in evaluating the sequence of events and weighing them according to the time-sensitive parameters.
Live transcription
Manual transcription solutions available today are for post-production and thus unsuitable for live events. Yet AI-powered live transcription is capable of processing live audio and video for transcription and captioning. It can provide real-time caption for live videos and webinars while transcribe instantly for phone calls and meetings.
AI transcription VS Human transcription
Human transcription is not fully replaced by AI transcription for some good seasons, even the latter one is a lot more economical.
Humans can maneuver background noise
Human transcription can still create an accurate transcript from a file with loud background noises, such as machinery, people talking, background music, as human ears are more attuned to different external factors. Meanwhile, the error rate of AI transcription stands at 14%, even with a clear audio file.
Humans understand different accents and dialects
AI transcription vocabulary is mainly based on the dictionary, meaning the machine can understand a short series of commands and limited words. It is common to see the machine having difficulty understanding accents, colloquial and interlocked speech while humans are well accustomed to many different accents.
Humans can differentiate homophones
Every language has a limited phonological inventory and homophones are inevitably common across multiple languages. Automatic-speech-recognition machine must rely on the sentence structure to predict which word to use, often leading to misused homophones. In contrast, humans can determine the appropriate homophone by analysing the context and meaning of the sentence.
Elite Asia offers AI transcription with human editing service, coupling benefits from both solutions. Generated by our latest AI transcription software, all transcripts undergo extensive editing and proofreading by selected professionals to ensure high accuracy.
