What is Whisper?
Whisper is an AI tool made by OpenAI that turns spoken words into written text. It works like a very smart recorder that can listen to any language and write down exactly what was said.
Let's break it down
- AI tool: a computer program that learns from lots of data to do a task.
- Turns spoken words into written text: it listens to audio and creates a transcript.
- OpenAI: the company that created Whisper.
- Any language: it can understand and transcribe many different languages, not just English.
- Very smart recorder: like a tape recorder, but it writes down the words automatically.
Why does it matter?
It makes it easy for anyone to capture what’s being said without typing, helping people save time, understand content in other languages, and give voice-based tools to those who can’t hear or speak well.
Where is it used?
- Adding captions to YouTube videos so viewers can read along.
- Transcribing business meetings so notes are automatically created.
- Powering voice assistants that need to understand user commands.
- Providing real-time subtitles for live events, helping deaf and hard-of-hearing audiences.
Good things about it
- High accuracy across many languages and accents.
- Open-source: developers can download, modify, and run it themselves.
- Works offline on a personal computer, protecting privacy.
- Fast enough for near-real-time transcription.
- Handles background noise better than many older tools.
Not-so-good things
- Best performance needs a powerful GPU; slower on regular laptops.
- Large model files take up a lot of storage space.
- May still mis-transcribe heavy regional accents or very noisy recordings.
- No built-in speaker identification, so it can’t tell who is talking without extra work.