[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Can you please add transcription to vocal me...
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Ask HN: Can you please add transcription to vocal messages in
messaging apps?
I know that there are employees of big tech companies lurking
around here. I have a feature request. Can you please add the
ability to see the transcript of a vocal message on messaging apps
like Teams, Signal, Telegram, Messenger, Discord, Slack, Whatsapp,
etc? I know that live transcription is already a thing so it must
be feasible, right? This feature would be super useful to see what
was said without having to playback a bunch of vocal messages. I
had the idea of doing this myself a long time ago but I basically
needed to recreate the entire messaging infrastructure just to add
this feature. So I donate the idea here.
Author : nassimsoftware
Score : 49 points
Date : 2021-10-25 19:43 UTC (3 hours ago)
| lowkj wrote:
| 100% agree, personally I just prefer typing but seems like I am
| not in the majority. I very often receive audio replies to my
| typed messages and it's very frustrating. 70% of the time, I'm
| not in a position where I can easily listen to the audio vs just
| reading text. The other 30% of the time I'm simply annoyed as I
| do not want to be forced to listen to the audio.
| nassimsoftware wrote:
| I'd like to add to this that the transcription doesn't even
| need to be 100% accurate to be useful. It'll mostly be used to
| get the gist of what was said and target more specifically
| which audio message requires to be re-listened to instead of
| having to listen to everything again.
| 0max wrote:
| You just described the Google Voice voicemail experience
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| I don't even need a TTS feature, just let me mark my chat as
| only-text please. People that send audios tend to consume more
| of my time than people who write because they are making up
| their mind as they speak.
|
| They seem to think: why waste my time putting my thoughts into
| words when I can waste everyone else's time while I figure out
| my ideas?
| [deleted]
| ximeng wrote:
| Wechat has this feature
| filipeisho wrote:
| Zenly also has this feature
| paxys wrote:
| FYI Slack does this already for all uploaded audio & video clips,
| and it works great.
| nassimsoftware wrote:
| Would be great if they added this for audio clips. Does Slack
| support vocal messaging? It has been a long time since I used
| Slack.
| paxys wrote:
| Yup, it does
| cianmm wrote:
| This seems like such an obvious Appley feature for iMessage,
| especially now that transcription can be done on-device.
| ximeng wrote:
| They've just added automatic OCR of photos as well to allow
| copy and paste from pictures of text.
| mbesto wrote:
| Isn't this a privacy issue with E2E encryption?
| nassimsoftware wrote:
| If it's done on device is there still a security risk?
| ARandomUserOnHN wrote:
| Not as long as the transcript is created on device.
| caymanjim wrote:
| Voice-to-text transcription can be done entirely on-device,
| although I'm not sure what the quality of existing solutions
| is. This is a barrier but not a showstopper.
| peterhi wrote:
| Oh yes, I've forgotten things and looked at my phone and gone "I
| know it's on here, which app was it?" Make all the messages texts
| searchable
|
| And whilst we are at it: TRANSCRIBE THE PHONE CALLS TOO!!!
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| Twilio has a few ways to do this, including audio that streams
| through Twilio.
|
| https://www.twilio.com/speech-recognition
|
| Disclaimer: I work for twilio, but am not representing them in
| this post
| trampish wrote:
| This would be a big step forward in improving accessibility for
| the hard of hearing.
| juusto wrote:
| I would love the opposite: text messages that can be go from
| text-to-speech. Specially useful when doing chores and those long
| threads some people write. Or one of those busy groups where
| everyone is saying something. Just hit play and let the phone
| read them all. (I use WhatsApp)
|
| Or is this a feature I am unaware on phones?
| tata71 wrote:
| It is.
| kpozin wrote:
| I think you can ask Siri or Google Assistant to read your new
| messages (by accessing the phone notification contents), but
| I'm not aware of in-app features.
| chefkoch wrote:
| Google Assistent can read out your messages, but i haven't
| tried out of it can read from one specific group chat.
| scoot wrote:
| Siri can read text from apps (messages, email, etc.): "Hey
| Siri, read the last WhatsApp from John".
|
| It will ask permission for access the first time you try.
| ksec wrote:
| May be this should be an OS feature rather than a Per App
| feature?
|
| I wish they could transcribe my Voice Mail too. Whenever I have a
| voice mail, auto call the mail box and transcribe it for me. 99%
| of it are junk. But just in case there is one real voice message.
| zwog wrote:
| There are several Telegram bots for this. But of course very
| questionable in terms of privacy. I had the idea to write one
| myself, I found an open source project to host it myself, but I
| don't remember the name.
|
| Fortunately, the voice messages have largely stopped with my
| contacts, so I didn't pursue it any furth
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(page generated 2021-10-25 23:02 UTC)