WhatsApp voice notes can be controversial. Either you adore them or you won’t bother making one. Like, ever. Regardless of which group your preference puts you in, the messaging app’s newest incoming feature may add a new element of convenience to your life. Meet voice note transcription.
What(sApp)? Please repeat that?
According to XDA Developers, the Facebook-owned app is working on a voice message transcription feature for iOS. It’ll automatically transcribe voice messages into text using speech recognition technology. At least, that’s if you choose to make use of the feature.
The feature will need special permission in iOS, so it won’t be turned on automatically. After permission is granted, a user will be directed to a new ‘transcription’ section where they can test it.
It sounds like the transcription feature won’t technically send data back to the servers to be transcribed — and the whole process will happen on-device. WABetainfo explains just that — that transcriptions will, in fact, happen on-device — while the first source for this leak casually mentions that “Speech data from this app will be sent to Apple to process your requests. This will also help Apple improve its speech recognition technology.”
So while it’s not being sent to WhatsApp or Facebook’s servers to be processed, Apple may have a sneaky listen as it tries to improve its own speech recognition tech.
Android users may not get access to the feature initially, seeing as the early reports only detail iOS compatibility. No one has found evidence that it’ll actually come to Android, but we doubt WhatsApp will develop such a useful feature if it wasn’t coming to all mobile platforms eventually.
The messaging platform’s been busy otherwise, working on the ability to transfer chats from Android to iOS, Instagram-style message reactions, and most recently end-to-end encryption on chat backups.