Most enterprises fail to use unstructured data, including audio and video, to achieve their goals. Gartner calls this “dark data” as nobody can analyze or monetize it. However, recent advances in AI have made it possible to shed some light on the dark voice data with speech-to-text 2.0 and unlimited voice search.

What is Speech-to-Text 2.0?

“Speech-to-Text 2.0” refers to a new approach to developing automatic speech recognition software by leveraging the latest developments in deep learning. It enables enterprises to convert voice to text with high accuracy, reliability and full privacy. Plus, 10-20x more cost-effective than the current solutions.

Improved accuracy with advances in artificial intelligence has been the main driver of the adoption of speech-to-text technology. Using machines to transcribe speech to text offers certain benefits over human transcription, such as cost, privacy, and fast turnover. For example, while the average cost for human transcription is around $1.5 per minute, Speech-to-Text (STT) has brought it down to less than $1.5 per hour on average. However, given the millions of hours of data generated every month, even using machines can be a significant cost item. For example, Google Speech-to-Text Enhanced costs $2.16 per hour. Furthermore, connectivity requirements and the controversial history of cloud providers do not offer full reliability and privacy.

Picovoice’s distinctive Speech-to-Text (STT) technology offers cloud-level accuracy with the benefits of edge computing: private by design, zero latency, and 10+ times more affordable. With Picovoice STT, enterprises no longer need to compromise privacy or incur hefty cloud bills to derive value from their voice content.

What’s Voice Search with no limits?

Voice Search with no limits refers to the technology that enables enterprises to do unlimited searches without worrying about the spelling of the words or training voice models. The main advantage of voice search is to overcome the necessity to convert voice to text to do searches.

Despite the advancements in artificial intelligence, there is no 100% accurate Speech-to-Text solution on the market. Even human transcription solution providers offer ~99% accuracy. Especially when it comes to homophones such as “matcha or much a” or special names such as “Hermes” which are pronounced differently across the globe, the Speech-to-Text solutions have difficulties. Speech indexing is a complementary solution to be used for these unique cases. Picovoice’s Speech-to-Index Engine, Octopus, indexes speech directly without relying on a text representation and makes even massive numbers of audio files searchable. Its acoustic-only approach boosts accuracy by removing the out-of-vocabulary limitation.

Picovoice’s Free Plan allows developers to build with any or all of the engines.