Transformation

Speech-to-Text

Turn spoken audio into accurate written transcript

Transformation Audio Basic Mature
Capability type
Transformation
Modality
Audio
Typical input
Audio stream / file
Typical output
Timestamped transcript
Measured by
Word error rate (WER)

Overview

Speech-to-text (ASR) converts an audio waveform into words. Contemporary systems are trained on very large multilingual audio sets, handle accents and background noise far better than older ones, and add diarisation so a transcript says who spoke.

How it works

Audio is converted to a spectrogram, encoded, and decoded into text by a sequence model. Separate stages add punctuation, casing, timestamps and speaker diarisation. Streaming models emit partial results with sub-second latency.

Supported AI tools

Support level is recorded per tool, so an integration is never shown as a built-in feature.

Use cases

Meeting transcription

Produce a searchable record with speaker labels and timestamps.

Corporate

Call-centre analytics

Transcribe calls so quality and compliance can be measured at scale.

Support

Video captions

Generate accurate captions for accessibility and silent autoplay.

Media

Clinical dictation

Let practitioners dictate notes straight into the record system.

Healthcare

Benefits

  • Makes meetings and calls searchable after the fact.
  • Produces captions that satisfy accessibility requirements.
  • Feeds downstream summarisation and analytics.
  • Enables voice interfaces and real-time dictation.

Limitations

  • Heavy accents, crosstalk and poor microphones cut accuracy.
  • Domain jargon and proper nouns need a custom vocabulary.
  • Speaker separation degrades once several people talk at once.
  • Streaming accuracy trails batch accuracy noticeably.

What to look for when choosing a tool

  • Word error rate on audio like yours, not a demo clip
  • Custom vocabulary for names and jargon
  • Speaker diarisation and timestamp granularity
  • Streaming latency if you need live output
  • On-device or private deployment for confidential audio

FAQ

How accurate is speech-to-text?
On clear audio in a major language, error rates are low enough to be usable with light editing. Accuracy falls quickly with background noise, overlapping speakers and unusual terminology.
Can it tell speakers apart?
Diarisation does this and works well for two or three speakers with distinct voices. Large meetings with crosstalk remain difficult.
Can transcription run without sending audio to a server?
Yes — several models run on-device, which matters when the recording is confidential. Expect a modest accuracy trade-off against the largest hosted models.