Live Transcribe
Developer(s)Google Research
Initial releaseFebruary 4, 2019; 3 years ago (2019-02-04)
Stable release
4.2.350293983 / January 19, 2021; 21 months ago (2021-01-19)
Operating systemAndroid
Size4mb
TypeAccessibility
LicenseOpen Source
Websitewww.android.com/accessibility/live-transcribe/

Live Transcribe is a smartphone application to get realtime captions developed by Google for the Android operating system. Development on the application began in partnership with Gallaudet University.[1] It was publicly released as a free beta for Android 5.0+ on the Google Play Store on February 4, 2019.[2] As of early 2022, it has garnered 500 million installs worldwide.[3]

Development

Researchers Dimitri Kanevsky, Sagar Savla and Chet Gnegy at Google developed the app in collaboration with researchers at Gallaudet University,[4] an American university for the education of the deaf and hard of hearing. The app uses machine learning to generate captions,[5] similar to YouTube's auto-generated captions.[6]

Features

The app uses automatic speech recognition to generate live captions in over 80 languages with varying accuracy.[7][8] The app requires internet to function and is available to download on the Google Play Store.

A later update to the app[9] added support for non-speech sound events such as clapping, laughter, music, applause, whistling and more.[10]

In August 2019, Google open-sourced the code behind Live Transcribe.[11][12]

In May 2020, the app started supporting transcription in Albanian, Burmese, Estonian, Macedonian, Mongolian, Punjabi, and Uzbek; bringing the total to 70.[13]

In March 2022, the app was updated with support to transcribe offline.[14]

References

  1. ^ "Meet the Deaf Developer Behind Google's Live Transcribe App". 2019-02-07. Retrieved 2021-01-23.
  2. ^ Dieter Bohn (2019-02-04). "Google Live Transcribe could be a big help for people who are deaf or hard of hearing". TheVerge.
  3. ^ "Live Transcribe & Sound Notifications - Apps on Google Play". play.google.com. Retrieved 2021-02-15.
  4. ^ "As ADA turns 30, tech is just getting started helping people with disabilities". 2020-07-27. Retrieved 2021-01-23.
  5. ^ "Real-time Continuous Transcription with Live Transcribe". Google AI Blog. Retrieved 2021-02-15.
  6. ^ "Google's Sagar Savla Built An App That Can Help 466 Million People Who Can't Hear Communicate". Times of India. 2020-01-06. Retrieved 2021-02-15.
  7. ^ Giridharan, Vignesh (2019-07-15). "Here's how Google is putting AI to work in healthcare, environmental conservation, agriculture and more | Digit". digit.in. Retrieved 2021-02-15.
  8. ^ Live Transcribe Team (2020-12-30). "Best Practices for Live Transcribe". Medium. Retrieved 2021-02-15.((cite web)): CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  9. ^ Li, Abner (2019-06-03). "Live Transcribe update will recognize laughing, applause". 9to5Google. Retrieved 2021-02-15.
  10. ^ Li, Abner (2019-05-16). "Android Live Transcribe can detect farts, but it won't (for now)". 9to5Google. Retrieved 2021-02-15.
  11. ^ "Google open-sources Live Transcribe's speech engine". VentureBeat. 2019-08-16. Retrieved 2021-02-15.
  12. ^ "Bringing Live Transcribe's Speech Engine to Everyone". Google Open Source Blog. Retrieved 2021-02-15.
  13. ^ "Accessibility updates that help tech work for everyone". Google. 2020-05-21. Retrieved 2022-10-06.
  14. ^ "Google adds an offline mode to the Live Transcribe app". XDA. 2022-03-11. Retrieved 2022-10-06.

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