This is the first ezine article I’m writing in about 15 years, and looking back, the world has changed so dramatically, in general, and my own, that my perspective, priorities, and could not be more different than what could have been. imagined

Almost 14 years ago, I stumbled upon online freelancing and became a transcriptionist by default. Long story short, I entered the world of television and film, having first transcribed focus groups, phone calls, clandestine interviews in noisy restaurants, and more gruesome things than I care to remember.

My entry into film and television changed everything, starting as a slow transcriptionist, working my way up to running one of the most successful film and television transcription businesses in the UK. I don’t have it, I just drive it. Just running it means orchestrating about 70 writers and about 500 clients. In a year and a half I admitted defeat with serious exhaustion and had to cut it down to only half a day, which gave me plenty of free time to explore the changes that have occurred in the last 15 years.

And I came across speech-to-text AIs, which are revolutionizing the world of transcription.

Now who needs transcription services?

Short

interrogators

doctors

University students

business people

television producers

film producers

podcasters

youtubers

And what services do transcriptionists provide?

Subtitle

post production scripts

Raw interview transcripts

Medical reports

court hearings

interrogations for purposes of prosecution

The list is endless.

When I first heard about speech-to-text, that’s when I bought Dragon Naturally Speaking, ooh, around 2014. I took longer to edit the transcripts than if I had transcribed them from scratch.

Enter Amazon Web Services.

Amazon Web Services has created the most powerful speech-to-text AI the world has ever seen or is likely to see.

Thanks to devteam.space, I found the following stats:

Markets and Markets conducted a study that concluded that the speech-to-speech recognition market would grow from $7.5 billion in 2018 to $21.5 billion by 2024 with an annual growth rate of 19.18 percent.

So, I jumped at the chance and it took me about eight months so far to develop my own speech-to-text AI from scratch. I have been scammed, scammed, lied to, and cheated by unscrupulous developers and nearly bankrupted myself financially by going ahead, in an attempt to gain access to this industry.

And in about two weeks from now, my AI will be ready for the world to use in any way it sees fit, to create the most affordable high-quality transcripts any AI can offer. Welcome to accuscript.ai. At just $0.075 per minute of audio and an average transcription time of 10 minutes per hour of audio, with 90 percent accuracy (and improving), this is a win-win for both owners and AI users.

We no longer have budgets that allow us to use human transcriptionists starting at around $1.20 per minute!

And don’t be fooled, those transcripts have first been put through an AI and lightly edited by a human. Imagine that: $1,125 per minute of audio to edit!

Yes, I am concerned about transcriptionists (myself included) who rely on the high fee charged for human transcription. But we have to stay ahead of time, or at least try to keep up.