What is AI speech recognition?

AI speech recognition, also called automatic speech recognition (ASR), converts spoken audio into written text using a neural model trained on transcribed speech. It transcribes recordings or live streams, adds punctuation and timestamps, and can tell speakers apart and handle many languages. Tools range from meeting and interview transcribers to subtitle generators and speech-to-text APIs developers build voice features on.

What these tools do

  • Real-time and batch audio-to-text transcription
  • Automatic punctuation, casing, and timestamps
  • Speaker diarization to label who said what
  • Multilingual recognition and spoken-language detection
  • Subtitle and caption export as SRT or VTT
  • Streaming API and voice-command integration

Who uses AI speech recognition

01

Meeting and interview notes

Turn calls, interviews, and lectures into searchable transcripts with speakers labeled and key points captured.

02

Video and podcast subtitles

Generate accurate captions and translated subtitles so creators can publish accessible clips faster.

03

Developers building voice apps

Add dictation, voice commands, or live captioning to products through a streaming speech-to-text API.

04

Accessibility and dictation

Help people who are deaf or hard of hearing follow audio, and let anyone write hands-free by voice.

How it works

An ASR model is trained on huge amounts of audio paired with its correct transcript, learning to map sound patterns to words. Given new audio, it predicts the most likely text, using surrounding context to pick between similar-sounding words and add punctuation. For live captioning it processes the audio in a stream, returning words within a fraction of a second as you speak.

Frequently asked questions