Finding fast, easy ways to capture, format, and organize information is something most people are after. Journalists can spend hours transcribing interviews, teams may be hunting for the perfect meeting assistant, while knowledge workers are always in search of better note-taking.
No matter your profession, some form of transcription technology is now an essential productivity tool. We sat down with Siyar Isik, the founder of Transkriptor, a speech-to-text platform to find out how AI transcription is becoming accessible to all, and where the future of Transkriptor is headed.
Q: For those who might not know Transkriptor, can you first tell us how did you get the idea to start this?
A: I think the driving factor behind the idea was a problem we all have. We spend a lot of time trying to write things down or transcribe things the old-fashioned way by hand. If you’re having a business call, a podcast interview, or a research conversation – transcripts are going to be able to save you time. However, before, it used to take days to get back your transcripts because you had to rely on paid transcription services or go for the free ones which are not accurate and take too much time.
So, in 2020, it just dawned on me that we should create this platform for speech-to-text because it will be faster, cheap, and more accurate. The transcription tool will be like super simple and easy. So, I believe that’s how the idea was kick-started.
Q: With Transkriptor being used across a number of different industries and professions. How would you say the software differs from other transcription platforms?
A: One of the biggest differences is that we built Transkriptor to become the one-stop-shop of productivity. It’s not just simply converting your speech to text. It will generate summaries, track sentiment, and extract your action items. So it’s basically a smarter meeting assistant or a virtual assistant.
You can use it to organize, search your conversations on all of your devices, transcribe in over 100 different languages, connect your tool, like Zoom or Google Drive – and it allows you to even chat with your transcript to search for specific information. So that level of flexibility and automation, you can’t find it in other platforms.
Q: In terms of accuracy of AI-powered transcription, I know that is a common concern for a lot of people. How does Transkriptor work in this area?
A: Accuracy is what we pride ourselves in. When it comes to training our models, we use diverse data to help it understand different accents, technical vocabularies, and overlapping conversations from multiple speakers. In terms of just general accuracy, even with clean audio – we hover around 99% accuracy consistently.
We also give the option to users to edit these transcripts that are generated using the app, which is very quick and easy to fine-tune. Everything is also cloud-synced so all of your documents and your little edits stay in a single place and organized.
Q: You mentioned integration with platforms like Zoom. Can you tell us how this works and how it might help a user in their productivity?
A: Sure. So, a lot of our customers who book meetings on Zoom or Microsoft Teams record their meetings. On Transkriptor, you can directly import those recordings and then automatically generate a complete transcript in minutes.
That transcript, again, is not just plain text. It’s going to come with summaries created by AI that’s built into the tool, it’s going to label the speaker, and also you’re going to have additional insights there that you can easily search, or share with people.
So, it makes it a lot easier to track your discussions, track actions that are required and go back to certain details without having to rewind the entire recording and sit through another hour-long meeting. It gives you a huge productivity boost.
Q: In terms of the mobile apps, I know you offer apps for Android and iOS. How important was accessibility across different platforms and devices?
A: I think one of the reasons we wanted to have the mobile app for both Android and iOS, is because people do not only work at their desks. You have a journalist out there who’s going to be recording an interview on the phone, and a consultant may be sitting on the other side transcribing his call recordings on the tablet.
We just wanted to make sure that no matter what device or platform you are using, Android, iOS, or a web browser, we wanted you to have the same seamless experience with the app. So, with our Android or iOS app, you can record your audio, generate your transcript, you can edit them, manage your files all from your mobile phone.
Q: Where do you see the role of AI-powered transcription tools in the future?
A: I see transcription becoming a lot more ingrained into a lot of the daily tasks or workflows. We’re moving past just, ‘Okay, let me convert an audio to a text’. We’re moving towards, ‘Let me summarize it in a few lines’, let me even have this real-time collaboration that’s built, you’re going to be able to collaborate with teams around the world and actually in real-time or get multilingual translation using the tools, or extra insights.
Over time, there’s going to be a lot more ways where AI takes care of the menial parts of transcription or documentation, so people can focus on the more creative, strategic, or important tasks that require human intelligence.
Q: For someone who is thinking of trying out Transkriptor for the first time, what is one thing you would say to them?
A: For someone who has been manually transcribing in the past or has been using unreliable tools or perhaps some free transcription tools that have been pretty horrible in terms of accuracy, I would highly recommend just going ahead and giving Transkriptor a try.
If you’re looking to transcribe interviews, looking to create some searchable knowledge base, or perhaps looking to just save time, then Transkriptor can help you be more productive with your work. We do have a free trial, so you can check it out and see where it fits in your overall workflow. We want to make sure that we make transcription effortless and accessible to anyone who’s looking for it.
From the editor….
AI is going to change the way we work in more ways than one. The good news is that with the tools like Transkriptor, we can see that the art and science of transcription has come a long way. It does not have to be cumbersome or painful. With high levels of accuracy, speed and a blend of innovative features, it’s helping us stay productive and focus on the most important things.
Learn more at https://transkriptor.com
