Microsoft's Transcribe in Word Gives Office 365 Subscribers 5 Hours of Transcription a Month (venturebeat.com) 22
Last October, Microsoft unveiled a transcription feature -- Transcribe in Word -- that is designed to let users leverage the power of the cloud to transcribe audio. After nearly a year in development, Transcribe in Word is now generally available in U.S. English at no cost to existing Microsoft 365 subscribers. It will come to Android and iOS later this year. From a report: You could say Microsoft is late to the party -- speech-to-text is hardly novel, after all. But Microsoft project manager Dan Parish says the company is "uniquely positioned" to provide a one-stop shop for transcription. "You don't have to worry about fussing around with different Windows apps," he said during a briefing with reporters. "What we're trying to do with all of our investments in the natural user interface space -- whether they have touch or voice, you name it -- is enable everyone to work in the way that's best for them so that they can be more effective, they can spend less time and energy creating the best work, and they can really focus on what matters most." Microsoft 365 subscribers using Edge or Chrome will now see a Dictate menu under the Home tab when they create a new Word document from Office.com. Selecting Transcribe will start a recording, which can be paused at any time, while hitting the "Save and transcribe now" button will send the recording to the Azure cloud for transcription. Prerecorded files in .wav, .mp4, .m4a, and .mp3 formats can be uploaded via the new Upload audio option.
Screw it (Score:3)
If the transcription we get in Outlook when we miss a phone call is any indication, unless the person speaks slow, flawless English, you won't be able to understand the message.
I could give examples of the hilarious transcriptions we receive, including, somehow, the person wants to murder you.
Not just poor transcription. Poor management. (Score:2)
Another example of Microsoft failures: Windows 10 update failures [google.com].
It is Microsoft ABUSE and poor management, in my opinion. Microsoft Office is a subscription! If you didn't use it during the month, you still pay. I use LibreOffice [libreoffice.org]. It is FREE.
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Oh bullshit. For shits and giggles I turned on the text transcription in Teams during a meeting today and I was frankly fucking amazed at how well it did, nearly flawless and that's with some fairly heavy accents during the call.
It probably works very well if that's any indication.
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The problem with transcribing in the cloud is they are data mining everything you say and even data mining your voice. Will you be happy when they can replicate your voice, pretend to be you, to sell crap to everyone on your contacts list. There is no way in hell I would touch cloud transcription services, the idea is insane. All done on local hardware and the voice content deleted once transcribed. You people are nuts to consider letting this service use YOU!
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How much extra? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's certainly the case that fully automated speech to text has improved over time; but there have been quite a few outfits whose "AI" happened to involve a lot more offshore body shop than the marketing copy let on; sometimes in order to deliver the product itself, sometimes allegedly only for 'improvement' purposes.
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Wait, you're joking right? You..think Microsoft is..using people to transcribe all that shit on Office365? And.. you got modded Insightful? Oh, Slashdot. Never change.
There is no additional charge because the idea is fucking laughable.
Why is this "in the cloud"??? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Else its shit.
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* offer not valid for Scottish accented recordings
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To be fair, most native English speakers find the Scottish accent unintelligible.
Also, a video of a Scottsman trying to pair his bluetooth phone:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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It's more than not necessary, it's potentially dangerous. If all services and information is on remote servers. What happens when communications systems go down and absolutely everything relies on them not going down?
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Text-to-speech can be done locally fairly well. There's little upside to requiring the cloud for this service, and plenty of downsides (no offline functionality, loss of privacy, etc...) I'm so sick of server-side applications being the new norm for EVERYTHING when it isn't necessary.
This is speech-to-text.
Huh? (Score:2)
When asked about the privacy implications of Transcribe in Word, Parish said Microsoft doesn’t retain recordings or transcription results but instead stores them in users’ personal OneDrive folders.
Am I reading that wrong or is that still Microsoft put the data on their servers?
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Microsoft? Transcription? Cloud? (Score:2)
Three words: No Fucking Way.
Well? (Score:2)
Is it all reported back to Microsoft so they can run it through AI to add data to your advertising avatar they keep on everyone?
Or is that pointless now because they watch you in Windows 10 already?
I'd rather use Dragon (Score:3)
And by "fussing around" I assume he's referring to "running" Dragon Naturally Speaking (or some competitor)? I've used it off and on for years, particularly as an assistive technology for people who had mobility issues and could speak a lot better than they could type. It works great. And you don't have to make annual payments to keep using it, and you're not limited to using it 5 hours a month. No cloud required.
MS Word (Score:2)
What year did MS Word introduce speech to text? It was so long ago, I can't remember. I do remember that it wasn't limited to 5 hours per month though.
Whichever speech to text you use, you'll have to learn how to speak so that it can interpret what you're saying. Computers can yet fill in the missing, unintelligible bits that humans do effortlessly in everyday conversation, & probably never will be able to because they can't infer intentions of others or infer what they meant to say. It takes strong AI