Over the past year we have noticed a rise in online AI audio transcription companies. As a company that only uses human hands to transcribe our scripts, we thought we should do some research and see just what you get for very little money.

We used a recent project for this exercise ‘Mindful Earth’ as it was the most suitable for this task. Single person, clear, concise audio… perfect for AI transcription.

At this stage we’re not looking to name and shame companies, there is a place for us all. But what I really wanted to do was highlight the difference between human audio transcription and AI technology.

I was also curious to see how accurate these super speedy scripts were and if we were in fact missing a trick in not providing an AI service. This is what we found:

Mindful Earth Audio Transcription

Comparative Results

BiTC Human Audio Transcription

  • We charged £78 for our transcription.
  • This took 2 hours to transcribe by hand, including proofreading before delivery.
  • We transcribe from video so the timecode is per your master play-out.
  • We always add speaker names or voiceover.
  • During this process we found 1 mistake in our transcription.

Online AI Audio Transcription

  • We paid £9 for this transcription.
  • It was delivered in 6 minutes.
  • The online portal was easy and quick to use but I had to pay at the time of booking.
  • AI transcriptions are taken from the audio file rather than video so the timestamps do not match your master play-out.
  • During this checking process we found at least 43 mistakes. These include inaudible sections, completely wrong words and little to no punctuation.
  • Spelling was good but the grammar was poor.

Summary

I was genuinely disappointed when I compared the two types of audio transcription. We have lost projects more recently in favour of this AI alternative and to think that clients are choosing a sub standard product purely based on speed and money is quite saddening.

As transcribers we pride ourselves on the work we produce and whilst we can’t transcribe a 30 minute script in 6 minutes, we could still do it pretty damn quickly if needed.

There is a whole industry currently struggling to get back on it’s feet and back into production. Within that are a whole load of talented transcribers and companies like BiTC that work day in and day out producing high quality work, working directly with productions and building relationships which is what makes the TV industry so fantastic to be part of.

Whilst I accept money is always a factor, you wouldn’t be a good production manager if it didn’t come down to budget sometimes, but please don’t settle for low quality, inaccurate transcriptions for the sake of a few hours work. Plan in advance, book your projects in and let us work with you and your budget to produce the quality of scripts your production deserves.

Examples of our post production scripts and transcriptions can be found here!