Watching a TED Talk online is an experience, especially since we can scroll down to read the transcript in greater detail. Audio transcription tools are incredibly useful, and we can view them as almost priceless pieces of software. They are indeed a true lifesaver.
Ask the student or journalist whose life has practically been transformed with audio transcription. It has made interviewing and note-taking a fabulous affair where they were once seen as tedious, back-breaking tasks consuming most of their workday.
But audio transcription tools that make unforgivable mistakes while transcribing audio and video into text can make a mountain out of a molehill. The last thing a good copywriter wants to do is to rely on an incorrect transcription and end up watching/listening to the audio/video file all over again to correct the mistakes.
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Transcribing natural language is probably the hardest for an audio transcription tool because understanding every voice’s subtleties and lilts is still beyond technology’s capabilities. This is where NLP can come in because it has the capability of learning and understanding the nuances of different languages, dialects, and voices. In this article, we are going to list down eight such powerful AI-based audio transcription tools that are relevant this year based on their accuracy and intelligence:

Verbit:
Verbit is probably 2021’s ultimate professional AI-powered audio transcription tool. It seems to cater to the right customer pool comprising the education sector, media houses, and enterprises. Verbit is backed by AI and automated speech recognition technology that work behind the scenes to do the transcription, giving Verbit it’s much-deserved position among 2021’s recommended AI audio transcription tools.
Otter.ai
Otter is a virtual assistant that does all the notetaking for every Google Meet, Zoom call or lecture. Otter promises intelligent, live transcription and even offers features like playback and keyword search. It’s speech recognition system combines AI and machine learning to feed semantics into the system. The NLP takes over from there to understand words and pronunciations. Also, machine learning works around a large data set within a massive neural network consisting of many nodes.
Scribie:
Scribie is an affordable audio transcription tool that works on manual as well as automated transcription. Manual transcription follows a four-step process with transcription at the top of the rung, all of which goes all the way down to quality check. The automated transcription then uses cutting-edge AI combined with a constantly learning NLP model built on real-world data from Scribie’s manual transcription service. Scribie goes through a technology overhaul year-on-year to upgrade its systems. The latest upgradation to their technology has been optimisations of their existing QC auditing system.
Amazon Transcribe:
Yes, Amazon is also very much into audio transcription, as expected. As a part of Amazon’s Web Services (AWS) offered for developers to integrate into their applications, Amazon Transcribe is very much on the scene in 2021. Amazon Transcribe is also being offered to enterprises arenas like contact centres, VOD, etc. As per its product page, Amazon Transcribe performs transcription using the deep learning-based automatic speech recognition (ASR) process.
Jog.ai:
Jog.ai offers to transcribe calls. Combining AI and NLP, Jog.ai is essentially an enterprise-level audio transcription tool that does the task of an intelligent personal assistant to both big and small organisations. When a call is made or received, Jog.ai’s speech recognition platform triggers the natural language processor to keep a tab on the conversation’s key phrases.
Trint:
Another interesting AI transcriber for 2021, Trint, is being marketed towards content creators and caters to enterprises as an exclusive and cost-heavy service. With automated speech recognition and natural language processing as the building blocks to its AI transcriber, Trint is a 2021 ready service.
Sonix:
Sonix’s market positioning is as a quick-to-transcribe product. It has several large enterprises in its customer base, mostly premier universities, publications, and popular media companies. Sonix has amazing features to show off, like speaker labelling and automated timecode realignment, all built on cutting-edge artificial intelligence.
Descript:
Descript is a 2021 audio transcription tool that’s offering a lot more than just audio transcribing. Descript’s AI capabilities work in a doc-like fashion which works great for enterprise collaboration. It relies on a 3rd party enterprise-grade transcription engine to carry out the AI transcription. Along with transcription, the AI system can also be used for editing podcasts, videos and text-to-speech overdub, along with screen recording and remote recording.