Live Transcribe is a smartphone application to get realtime captions developed by Google for the Android operating system. Development on the application began in partnership with Gallaudet University.[2] It was publicly released as a free beta for Android 5.0+ on the Google Play Store on February 4, 2019.[3] As of early 2023 it had been downloaded over 500 million times.[4] The app can be installed from an .apk file by sideloading and it will launch, but the actual transcription functionality is disabled, requiring creation of an account with Google.
Developer(s) | Google Research |
---|---|
Initial release | February 4, 2019 |
Stable release | 6.6.602963593[1]
/ February 5, 2024 |
Operating system | Android |
Size | 4mb |
Type | Accessibility |
License | Open Source |
Website | www |
Researchers Dimitri Kanevsky, Sagar Savla and Chet Gnegy at Google developed the app in collaboration with researchers at Gallaudet University,[5] an American university for the education of the deaf and hard of hearing. The app uses machine learning to generate captions,[6] similar to YouTube's auto-generated captions.[7]
The app uses automatic speech recognition to generate live captions in over 80 languages with varying accuracy.[8][9] The app, which requires connection to the Internet to function, is available to download on the Google Play Store.
A later update to the app[10] displayed information on sounds such as clapping, laughter, music, applause, and whistling.[11]
In August 2019, Google made the code for Live Transcribe open-source.[12][13]
In May 2020, the app started supporting transcription in Albanian, Burmese, Estonian, Macedonian, Mongolian, Punjabi, and Uzbek, supporting 70 languages.[14]
In March 2022, the app was updated with support to transcribe offline, without Internet connection, so long as the appropriate language pack has been installed.[15] The offline mode is only available for devices with 6GB of RAM and certain Google Pixel devices.