Google details how ML helps transcribe, recognize audio in Recorder app

Following up an extensive explainer on some of the artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technology behind the camera in the Pixel 4, Google’s AI team has posted another blog detailing how the new Recorder app works. Recorder launched on Pixel 4 and recently made its way to older Pixel devices. The app offers the ability to not only record audio but transcribe it and recognize different sounds so users can search through recordings with ease. In the post, Google notes that it built Recorder because “much of the world’s information is conveyed through speech,” which can be difficult to look through to find information after the fact. Google created Recorder to help users find that information. The app uses an on-device machine learning model optimized for long, multi-hour audio sessions. Google also made sure that Recorder could index conversations “by mapping words to timestamps as computed by the speech recognition model.” If you’ve used the Recorder app, this is what allows you to tap on a word in the transcription and start playback from that specific point. It also enables the ability to search recordings for a word and jump directly to that point in the audio.