Should you be hard of hearing or deaf there is a challenge. It’s heavenly if you can’t follow everything. That problem is partially solved thanks to MacWhisper on your Apple Mac because it converts speech into text thanks to AI. In other words, you then have a little angel on your shoulders who spells out everything to you thanks to this app on your Apple device.
In case you have some trouble hearing: this Whisper app may offer a solution. Namely, it allows people to read conversations. It is not new, as Apple has been making strides in terms of accessibility for some time. Nevertheless, Whisper claims that it can convert free speech in a natural way, and that is immensely pleasing.
A Mac app that helps deaf people get started
Transcription services like Otter and Transcribe allow you to convert audio files to text so you can add it to a project or interview to read back, or hear, if you will. But Whisper really goes one step further, and it’s free.
So now there’s a Mac app that solves the challenge: it’s developed by Jordi Bruin, and available for download for Mac.
Whisper at work. (Image: Jordi Brown)
You can drag an mp3, mp4, wav or m4a file into the app and by using OpenAI a window is displayed showing the entire transcription, and you can edit parts of it on your Apple Mac. If the app misspells certain things then that is easy to adjust.
More understandable and meaningful thanks to Apple’s AI in MacWhisper
Brown is hopeful anyway that apps like MacWhisper show how AI can be used for good purpose. “I don’t think most people realize that Whisper is also based on technology like GPT,” he states. “Whisper and Large Language Models are different, but they are based on the progress of AI over the past few years. Whisper really shows that advances can be used that we never considered before.”
Brown is hopeful anyway that Whisper on the Mac will benefit many people thanks to AI like ChatGPT. “I hope AI makes it easier for developers to come up with ways to solve accessibility challenges,” he said.
So Brown actually wants to use Apple’s AI for people’s convenience: “Transcriptions for video and audio content are a very obvious fill-in, but I’m also looking forward to seeing how AI can make complex computer interactions easier for people with limited motor skills.”
While we still have a raised eyebrow toward AI and thus Apple (sometimes) we do have to say: it’s a great time to be alive and MacWhisper is an absolute must-have.