Speech-to-text
Also called speech recognition or ASR. What it does, and why it matters for an AI phone agent.
The short answer
What is speech-to-text?
Speech-to-text, also called speech recognition or automatic speech recognition (ASR), is technology that converts spoken words into written text. It powers dictation, captions, call transcripts and AI phone agents, which need to turn what the caller says into text before a language model can understand it. Accuracy depends on audio quality, background noise, accents, the language and specialist vocabulary such as names, street names or product codes.
How it works
A speech model listens to the audio in short slices and predicts the most likely words, using the surrounding words to settle what was said. It runs in one of two ways. Streaming recognition works while the person is still talking, which is what a live AI agent needs to reply without a long pause. Batch recognition processes a finished recording, which is how most call transcripts are made.
Example
A caller to an auto repair shop says the make of her car, her plate number and "the brakes are squeaking". Speech-to-text turns that into text in a fraction of a second, the agent understands it and asks when she can bring the car in. After the call the same audio is transcribed in full, so the owner can read exactly what she said.
What it means for a small business
Most AI agent mistakes on a phone line start with a misheard word, not a wrong answer. Before you go live, test the agent with the names, streets and product names your callers actually say, from a mobile phone in a noisy place. With Daber AI you can test the agent in your browser before connecting a number, and every real call is saved with its recording and transcript, so you can check what was heard.
Questions
Is speech recognition the same as voice recognition?
No. Speech recognition works out what was said. Voice recognition (speaker recognition) works out who is speaking. People use the words interchangeably, but they are different technologies.
Does speech-to-text work in languages other than English?
Yes. Current systems support many languages, though accuracy varies by language and by model. A Daber AI agent speaks the caller's language, Hebrew included; test it with the words your own callers use.
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