A screenshot of Google Live Transcribe running on a Samsung Galaxy S20 | |
| Developer(s) | Google Research |
|---|---|
| Initial release | February 4, 2019 |
| Stable release | 4.2.350293983
/ January 19, 2021 |
| Operating system | Android |
| Size | 4mb |
| Type | Accessibility |
| License | Open Source |
| Website | www |
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 2023 it had been downloaded over 500 million times.[3]
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]
The app uses automatic speech recognition to generate live captions in over 80 languages with varying accuracy.[7][8] 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[9] displayed information on sounds such as clapping, laughter, music, applause, and whistling.[10]
In August 2019, Google made the code for Live Transcribe open-source.[11][12]
In May 2020, the app started supporting transcription in Albanian, Burmese, Estonian, Macedonian, Mongolian, Punjabi, and Uzbek, supporting 70 languages.[13]
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.[14]
