Speech recognition technology is a hot commodity, and some of the biggest names in the industry are racing to corner the market and perfect the technology here. And they’re only one side of the market. A search for speech-to-text APIs will bring back tons of results. The exciting part is that any developer worth their salt can incorporate speech-based communication with their users. The less exciting part is that there’s a whole set of options to choose from. New APIs appear and old ones die or are gobbled up by existing projects all the time. But there’s one name that stands apart from the rest in 2021. AssemblyAI offers one of the most promising opportunities for speech to text available today.
Focused on Speech to Text
Speech recognition can be applied in a dramatic amount of different ways – with application in everything from virtual assistants to A.I. training. But each of these sub-disciplines come with their own unique demands. AssemblyAI is an API laser-focused on automated transcription, and that means a feature set that’s tailored specifically to the demands of those users.
Automated punctuation and capitalization mean that you can have transcripts that are practically ready to publish without the need for a proofreader, along with timestamps automatically printed to your transcripts. The tighter purview also means that less space will be dominated by an array of features that you don’t need. That lean approach will be a blessing down the line when new developers come along and other elements of your app undergo major changes.
Making a Difficult Task Look Easy
The simple fact of the matter is that transcription is tough, and it’s tough in many ways that other forms of speech recognition aren’t. While a voice assistant may need to understand the general thrust of what you’re saying to send the request for a search query, it doesn’t need to be nearly as precise. A speech-to-text API needs to be meticulous to create meaningful transcripts, and it needs to be able to parse all the various pauses, mutters, and intonations. It’s a difficult enough task for a person, but there’s a lot of specificities that need to be achieved with speech to text.
AssemblyDrive’s AI is some of the most impressive around in that regard. It was rated as Nordic API’s best transcription API in 2020, thanks to the precision and confidence of the deep learning algorithms at work. There’s still no such thing as a perfect transcription service, and they’re probably won’t be one for some time. But AssemblyDrive’s recognition of that is refreshing. They attach confidence scores for all the words in a transcript, allowing for a much easier double-check system regarding the quality of your transcription.
Great Quality of Life
APIs often have a tendency to be pretty basic affairs, but AssemblyAI makes simple navigation a breeze and provides you with a deep bench of features to work with. There’s support for every major audio and video format, so you don’t need to worry about going through a frustrating conversion process to get the transcript you need. Additionally, there’s a lot of automated options in place. From censoring swear words to assigning labels to speakers, the algorithms at work here are doing a lot of heavy lifting. The possibilities go deeper as well. From hiding credit card information to highlighting keywords and phrases, there’s everything a professional would need here. This voice to text API is revolutionary, and it’s going to be a major player in speech recognition technology for a long time to come.
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