Otter speech to text1/4/2023 ![]() ![]() It made me realize that after tens of thousands of hours at a keyboard, when writing I essentially think through my fingers. As a technical challenge that wasn’t so hard, but it required a much greater cognitive leap than I had anticipated. I revealed at the end of the article that, as a stunt, I had composed the whole piece by dictation with Dragon, rather than by typing. For instance, that era’s most effective dictation systems, like Dragon Naturally Speaking and IBM’s ViaVoice, could be “trained” to do a more-or-less good job of recognizing and understanding your own voice, after enough patient trial-and-error correction. The article laid out some halting early steps toward its realization. ![]() It would help groups that want minutes of their meetings or brainstorming sessions, legal professionals who need quick transcripts of what just happened at trials, students in big lecture halls, people who want to dictate e-mail while stuck in traffic, and those who, owing to disability or stress injury, are not able to type. This machine would have advantages for other people, too. This would save the two or three hours it takes to listen to and type up each hour's worth of recorded material. I would give it the tape recordings I make during interviews or while attending speeches, and it would give me back a transcript of who said what. I had a specific chore in mind for such a machine. It would have to show that it could accurately convert the sound of spoken language to typed-up text. The headline on that article was “From Your Lips to Your Printer,” and the article began this way:įor years I knew exactly what a computer would have to do to make itself twice as useful as it already was. The headline on this post might as well be “answered prayers.” It is the response to a hope I laid out in an Atlantic article 21 years ago. (For the record, I have no connection with the company except as a customer.) I’ve tried countless applications in this field, and for me this is the first one that works. #Otter speech to text professionalEverything that follows below is an elaboration on these next two sentences: If your professional or personal duties involve converting voice recordings to text, you’ll want to check out a new service called Otter.ai. Today’s entry is about a recent advance that has substantially changed my working life for the better. I dust off the walnut every so often.Īt the end of this post I’ll include links to some entries from that era onward, about programs, machinery, advances, and setbacks I have found notable through the personal-computing age. #Otter speech to text softwareThe software was a writing program called The Electric Pencil, invented by the filmmaker Michael Shrayer. The hardware was a Processor Technology SOL-20, designed by Lee Felsenstein and renowned in the computer world as the machine that came in a lovely burled-walnut case. ![]() The topic has fascinated me ever since I patched together my own first computer and programs in the late 1970s. This is an installment in the “ Interesting Software ” chronicles. ![]()
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