Techniques

Speech-to-Text (STT)

AI technology that converts spoken words into written text in real-time or from recordings.

What is Speech-to-Text (STT)?

Speech-to-Text (STT) is AI technology that converts spoken words into written text.

It uses automatic speech recognition (ASR) models that analyze audio patterns, match them to phonemes, and predict words based on language context. Modern STT can handle multiple speakers, accents, and background noise.

Builders use STT to transcribe customer calls, create meeting notes, add voice commands to apps, or build voice-first products. Popular options include OpenAI's Whisper, Google Cloud Speech-to-Text, and Gladia.

Pricing varies from free tiers (Whisper is open source) to pay-per-minute for cloud APIs. Most services charge $0.006-0.024 per minute of audio.

Good to Know

Converts audio (live or recorded) into text using AI models
Modern STT handles multiple speakers, accents, and noisy environments
Whisper by OpenAI is free and open source, cloud APIs charge per minute
Typical accuracy is 90-95% for clear audio with standard accents
Most APIs return results in seconds for short clips, real-time for streaming

How Vibe Coders Use Speech-to-Text (STT)

1
Transcribing customer support calls to train AI chatbots on real conversations
2
Adding voice commands to your app so users can speak instead of type
3
Building automatic meeting notes that capture what everyone said
4
Creating searchable transcripts of podcast episodes or video content

Frequently Asked Questions

Related Terms

AI Model

A trained algorithm that takes inputs (text, images, data) and produces outputs (predictions, classifications, generated content).

Whisper

OpenAI's open-source speech-to-text model that converts audio to text with high accuracy across 99 languages.

Tokens

The bite-sized chunks of text that AI models read and generate, like words or word fragments. They're how AI counts and processes language.

Text-to-Speech (TTS)

Technology that converts written text into spoken audio using AI-generated voices that sound increasingly human-like.

Prompt Engineering

The practice of crafting specific instructions to get better outputs from AI models like ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini.

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