Tag: whisper

Silicon Valley is driving users to ditch keyboards and spend hours talking to their tech

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Gavin McNamara has abandoned his keyboard and spends all day talking rather than typing.

He speaks for hours with his computer and phone, sending emails, writing presentations, posting on LinkedIn and even coding through conversations using an AI dictation app from San Francisco startup, Wispr Flow.

The AI punctuates, formats and adapts his rambling into coherent copy. McNamara averages 125 words per minute, which is twice the average typing speed.

“At this point, anything that could be done by typing, I do by speaking,” said the 32-year-old, founder of software agency Why Not Us. “I just talk.”

Across 77 apps, he has dictated nearly 300,000 words in the past five months — that’s equivalent to writing three novels.

California’s tech titans and startups are at the forefront of a movement to use AI and the large language models they are based on to push people to interact with technology using their voices rather than their fingers.

“AI and LLMs have changed the dynamic,” said CJ Pais, the San Diego-based creator of free voice-to-text dictation app Handy. “Using your voice is much faster than typing.”

A mix of independent developers and startups, including Handy, San Fransico’s Wispr Flow and Willow and others, have sprung up to offer accurate voice interaction with artificial intelligence.

The biggest names in tech are also creating new ways for people to partner with AI. Meta’s latest smart glasses rely on voice. OpenAI and Meta have designed distinct personalities for their bots’ voice chats. Even Amazon’s Alexa and Apple’s Siri are undergoing AI upgrades, which the companies anticipate will have everyone talking to their tech much more.

These free and paid methods for using spoken words with computers have attracted millions of users, including coders, executive assistants, lawyers, content creators, and medical practitioners. Some optimists think the keyboard could become obsolete.

“I’m excited to announce that we’ve removed keyboards from the most prestigious television awards in the world,” Allan Guo, the founder of Willow, said in a post on LinkedIn, noting that the Emmy Awards team used Willow’s voice dictation for sending Slack messages and clearing inboxes faster in preparation for the 2026 awards.

Over the years, big tech companies have adapted many of their products with voice-first features – for convenience. Today’s pivot away from voice as an accessibility feature to a productivity tool.

In late 2022, the maker of ChatGPT started giving away unfettered acccess to its automatic speech recognition model called Whisper, trained on 680,000 hours of multilingual data. OpenAI shared the tech for accurate audio transcription, once a closely guarded big tech secret. Anyone could now download and run high-quality AI transcription for free on their laptop.

The new wave of AI dictation apps uses Whisper as the foundation and builds on top to offer live dictation. While there are free alternatives, paid subscription costs between $8 and $12 a month.

AI-powered dictation is now gaining a toehold among programmers and regular users – and getting people to talk to their laptops. Be it writing emails, sending SMS, designing a website, or giving AIs tasks, early adopters say dictation allow them to work faster, think more clearly, and be more productive.

“The people who’ve adopted voice heavily aren’t going back. Once you’re talking 20 hours a week to your laptop, typing feels like friction,” said Naveen Naidu, the general manager of New York-based voice dictation app Monologue. “Where I think it’s heading: voice becomes the delegation layer. You speak your intent, and things happen.”

These new AI dictation apps leverage Apple’s advanced chips on iPhones and Macs to run private on-device dictation.

Geoffrey Huntley, an independent software developer, switched almost completely to voice for work in June.

He often starts projects by opening a voice prompt and asking the AI to interview him about his concerns and project requirements before any code is generated.

“I speak to it, like I’m riffing in a jazz band, backwards, forwards, backwards, forwards,” Huntley said. This vocal dance helps refine the specifications, then the AI takes the wheel, and builds software.

Beyond coding, Huntley uses voice to “let it rip” when capturing blog post ideas or messaging, using apps like Superwhisper or Whisper Flow to get a “first dump” of thoughts before moving to a keyboard for final editing.

A growing number of software developers in Silicon Valley are dictating coding instructions for hours at a time instead of typing. The combination of rapidly advancing AI agents that can code for hours, with voice inputs capturing thoughts faster than typing, has boosted their productivity.

Self-described “vibe coder” McNamara built over 25 web apps in a few months, a speed of development that would be impossible without voice instructions.

“I don’t think that [typing], by any means, would be even efficient or effective to get there as fast as I did with talking,” McNamara said.

He used a meandering conversation and a few hours to get AI to build Sprout Gifts, a gifting registry for kids, and an app to appraise any items via photos.

To be sure, AI can make mistakes, and its work needs to be checked.

Meanwhile, wide adoption has brought new inconveniences, as even power users feel awkward talking to their laptops. Crowded open offices are not designed for many people to be conversing with their computers at the same time.

“Love voice, but not in an office setting,” said one user on X. “I dislike talking around other people. I would do it in a closed-door office, or go work in my car.”

McNamara uses headphones so people assume he is on a call.

“It’s like the social hack that I have,” he said.

While it is too early to call whether and when the Qwerty keyboard might follow the ticker-tape and fax machines into obsolescence, the velocity toward voice is accelerating, said Dylan Fox, founder of San Francisco-based Assembly AI, which offers audio models to companies.

“We’re definitely in the beginning of what we think of as like this 10 to 100x increase in demand for voice, AI applications and interfaces,” he said.

For the coder, McNamara, talking more to chatbots has made him a better buddy.

He used to be bad at responding to texts. Now he gets back to friends right away.

“I am so quick to respond, they are like ‘Who’s this guy?’” he said.

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Nilesh Christopher

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January 29, 2026
The Best Transcription Services

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AI may have caused a crisis in the creative arts, huge problems with misinformation, and further demands on our creaking energy systems, but there’s undoubtedly one area where it’s made life much easier: Being able to parse what’s being said in audio clips.

Recordings of interviews, meetings, lectures, and voice notes can now be converted to digital text in seconds rather than hours. AI also powers accessibility features like Live Captions, which show real-time subtitles on the screen even if they weren’t included in the original video clip.

All this processing takes time and resources, so free options are scarce. However, we’ve identified five services here that are free but have limitations so you can see how well they fit your needs.

Google Recorder

The Google Recorder app for Android is completely free to use. In this case, the catches are that it only works with live audio, not recorded clips and that you need to own a Google Pixel handset to use it (there is a web interface you can access, but only for playing back files, not creating them).

If you do have a Pixel phone, and you only need to work with live audio, it’s perfect. You can even hook up an external mic to your handset if required, and the text transcription appears on screen almost in time with the audio being recorded.

Searching through transcripts is simple—you can even search for sounds like “laughter” or “music”—and the audio can be edited by simply tweaking the text. You even get an AI-generated summary of the transcript. If you have a Samsung phone, the Voice Recorder and Galaxy AI work similarly, and Apple is adding features that are comparable to iOS 18.

Whisper

©Whisper uses OpenAI to transcribe audio.

OpenAI lets anyone use its Whisper AI audio-to-text engine for free. Still, you either need to use the web app on Hugging Face (convenient, but often busy and slow) or install a local version on your computer (quick and private, but your machine will need to be able to reach a decent level of performance).

The web interface couldn’t be much easier to use: You can either upload a file from a disk or speak directly into your computer’s microphone. After a few minutes of processing, the text appears on the other side of the window. You can even have AI translate the audio into different languages.

If you don’t want to queue, you can install Whisper locally if your computer is up to it. It’s not the most straightforward process, but if you’re up for the challenge, there are comprehensive instructions here. You’ve then got a local AI transcription service you can use as often as you like, free of charge.

Otter

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Otter is a professional-level transcription service for businesses and individuals. It offers a polished experience and a whole raft of features—it can transcribe audio to text and create summaries, actionable items, and plenty more.

Across the web and mobile apps, everything is intuitively laid out and easy to navigate, and useful touches are sprinkled throughout, from the integration with numerous third-party apps to the way different speakers can be identified in the audio.

As you might expect, this functionality comes with a fair price attached, and paid plans start at $16.99 per month. If you stick with the free tier, you’re limited to 300 transcription minutes per month, 30 minutes for each conversation, and three audio or file uploads until you upgrade.

Happy Scribe

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Happy Scribe is similar to Otter in that it can cater to large companies as well as individuals. It, too, has a basic free plan: You’re limited to 10 minutes of audio in your files, and there are various other restrictions (like not being able to export files). If you find the service useful, pricing starts at $17 a month.

One of the best parts of Happy Scribe is the elegant and streamlined interface—much of it looks like a slightly tweaked Google Docs page—which means everything is easy to navigate. Your transcriptions come with speaker labels and time stamps, and the reviewing tools are simple to use as well.

The files you generate can be tagged and sorted into folders as needed, and there are useful features sprinkled throughout: A built-in translation tool, for example, and a custom dictionary where you can add words the AI might not be expecting. Another nice feature is you can pay for human-powered transcription, too, if you wish.

MeetGeek

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Head to the MeetGeek site, which promises to handle everything from interviews and meetings to customer calls and online classes. This transcription service can handle almost everything you want to throw in its direction. Many of its features are geared towards meetings (hence the name), but you can use it with any audio you like.

The modern-looking interface gives you quick access to the different areas of MeetGeek, including your calendar and past recordings. It works well if multiple people are in your recordings—for example, they can all be emailed a copy of the transcript with a couple of clicks.

It’s not difficult to get started with MeetGeek free of charge. Paid plans start at $19 per month, but even without paying, you can process five hours of transcription per month, and you get three months of transcript storage and one month of audio storage included, too. The free plan includes features such as uploads and AI meeting summaries.

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David Nield

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July 8, 2024
Sex offender who lured Charlotte teen to Missouri indicted by federal grand jury
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Christopher Porter, 30, will soon appear in front of a Charlotte jury for luring an Indian Trail teen to Missouri, where police say he raped her and took videos. A federal grand jury indicted him Wednesday, Feb. 21, 2024.

Department of Justice

The man who police say used a social messaging app to meet and eventually coerce a Charlotte teen into running away and producing child pornography will face a judge in her hometown.

Christopher Porter, 30, has been held in Missouri since Kirkwood police found him in a Lowe’s parking lot with the girl. They were near St. Louis — 750 miles away from the Indian Trail home she left 12 days earlier.

The two met on Whisper, Kirkwood police told The Charlotte Observer, and he picked the girl up in Oklahoma. The app, similar to Discord, allows users to remain anonymous.

“Whisper is the best place to discover secrets around you… Search For Something! No seriously, do it,” the platform says on its website.

Porter was violating his sex offender registration when he traveled outside his home state of California, where he “has a prior for lewd and lascivious acts with a child under the age of 14,” according to a complaint filed by Missouri police.

A federal grand jury in Charlotte indicted Porter Wednesday, charging him with production of child pornography and committing a “qualifying felony offense involving a minor.”

A St. Louis grand jury in December indicted him with four counts: statutory rape, statutory sodomy, sexual exploitation of a minor and possession of child pornography — including “moving images” and a video.

Porter could face 30 to 50 years for each of the three counts of production of child pornography. The charge of committing a felony while being required to register as a sex offender could add 10 years on top of that, said the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Western District of North Carolina in a news release.

Sexual predators on Whisper, messaging apps

In 2022, a 29-year-old was sentenced to 60 months in prison for using Whisper and “engaging in sexually explicit conversations” with someone he believed was a 13-year-old girl from Virginia. In reality, he was talking to undercover police.

A Tennessee corrections officer who police contacted through “the dark web” — again posing as a guardian offering a child for sex — is now spending 17 years in prison for traveling to North Carolina intending to rape a toddler.

What parents, kids should know about sextortion online

“Sextortion can start on any site, app, messaging platform, or game where people meet and communicate,” according to the FBI.

In most cases, young people believe they are talking to someone their own age. The person on the other end may claim to already have revealing photos of the child and demand more. When they receive more, they may threaten to publish them or become violent.

“The shame, fear, and confusion children feel when they are caught in this cycle often prevents them from asking for help or reporting the abuse,” the FBI writes.

In 2022, law enforcement agencies received over 7,000 reports related to the online sextortion of minors, resulting in at least 3,000 victims, primarily boys. More than a dozen sextortion victims were reported to have died by suicide, the bureau wrote in a news release.

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children outlined steps parents and young people can take if they or their child are a victim of sextortion, including:
- Remember, the predator is to blame, not your child or you.
- Get help before deciding whether to pay money or otherwise comply with the predator. Cooperating or paying rarely stops the blackmail and continued harassment.
- REPORT the predator’s account via the platform’s safety feature.
- BLOCK the predator and DO NOT DELETE the profile or messages because that can be helpful to law enforcement in identifying and stopping them.
- Let NCMEC help get explicit images of you off the internet.
- Visit missingkids.org/IsYourExplicitContentOutThere to learn how to notify companies yourself or visit cybertipline.org to report to us for help with the process.
- Ask for help. This can be a very complex problem and may require help from adults or law enforcement.
- If you don’t feel that you have adults in your corner, you can reach out to NCMEC for support at gethelp@ncmec.org or call NCMEC at 1-800-THE-LOST.
This story was originally published February 21, 2024, 3:57 PM.

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Julia Coin covers local and statewide topics — including destructive fires, illegal gambling and the pervasiveness of drugs in schools — as The Charlotte Observer’s breaking news and courts reporter. Michigan-born and Florida-raised, she studied journalism at the University of Florida, where she covered statewide legislation, sexual assault on campus and Hurricane Ian’s destruction.
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February 21, 2024