Speech recognition software is becoming much more commonplace than you realise. While you may have struggled with an automated speech recognition system over the phone at some stage, it’s application in the online arena is becoming synonymous with video. Since many streaming platforms want to offer subtitles for their video content, it’s a requirement for entertainment.
Then, over and above this consider the videos on your social media platforms. The platforms have realised that many people consume their media in a variety of ways. In some cases, audio isn’t an option or inaccessible depending on the circumstances of the viewer. So, it’s become important to offer subtitles to make it easier to comprehend the messaging without having to be so dependent on audio. This means, video messaging is more effective when users don’t have or want sound to be a part of the equation. Some of the subtitles have actually come to be added as a stylistic element to enhance the video.
While human transcription factors into these kinds of subtitle situations, they can be automated using speech recognition transcription. This general adoption of speech recognition is making the development of the technology much more crucial. Having a high demand for these kinds of applications means that players like Nuance, who were recently taken over by Microsoft, will be leveraging their technology to further develop the language models and algorithms to accommodate general speech recognition.
While English has a strong focus, it will naturally branch out to transcribe other languages. While we probably will get to a stage where basic recordings of meetings will be able to be transcribed automatically with pinpoint precision, Dragon is one of the best software available for this task. It may not be able to get every speaker’s transcription 100% correct, even if individuals all have their own headset, but having someone listen back to video or recordings to repeat what was said into a single document is a worthy workaround.