Live Transcribe is a
smartphone application to get realtime captions developed by
Google for the
Android
Android may refer to:
Science and technology
* Android (robot), a humanoid robot or synthetic organism designed to imitate a human
* Android (operating system), Google's mobile operating system
** Bugdroid, a Google mascot sometimes referred to ...
operating system. Development on the application began in partnership with
Gallaudet University
Gallaudet University ( ) is a private federally chartered research university in Washington, D.C. for the education of the deaf and hard of hearing. It was founded in 1864 as a grammar school for both deaf and blind children. It was the first sc ...
. It was publicly released as a free beta for
Android 5.0
Android Lollipop ( codenamed Android L during development) is the fifth major version of the Android mobile operating system developed by Google and the 12th version of Android, spanning versions between 5.0 and 5.1.1. Unveiled on June 25, 2014 ...
+ on the
Google Play Store on February 4, 2019. As of early 2023 it had been downloaded over 500 million times. The app can be installed from an .apk file by sideloading and it will launch, but the actual transcription functionality is disabled, requiring creation of an account with Google.
Development
Researchers Dimitri Kanevsky,
Sagar Savla and Chet Gnegy at Google developed the app in collaboration with researchers at
Gallaudet University
Gallaudet University ( ) is a private federally chartered research university in Washington, D.C. for the education of the deaf and hard of hearing. It was founded in 1864 as a grammar school for both deaf and blind children. It was the first sc ...
, an American university for the education of the deaf and hard of hearing. The app uses
machine learning to generate captions, similar to YouTube's auto-generated captions.
Features
The app uses
automatic speech recognition to generate live captions in over 80 languages with varying accuracy. The app, which requires connection to the
Internet to function, is available to download on the
Google Play Store.
A later update to the app displayed information on sounds such as clapping, laughter, music, applause, and whistling.
In August 2019, Google made the code for Live Transcribe
open-source
Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...
.
In May 2020, the app started supporting transcription in Albanian, Burmese, Estonian, Macedonian, Mongolian, Punjabi, and Uzbek, supporting 70 languages.
In March 2022, the app was updated with support to transcribe offline, without Internet connection, so long as the appropriate language pack has been installed.
The offline mode is only available for devices with 6GB of RAM and certain Google Pixel devices.
References
External links
*
Application software
Google
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