A new survey on automatic speech recognition (ASR) and captioning trends revealed that nearly half of respondents desire greater accuracy in their ASR tools.
“Navigating Automatic Speech Recognition” surveyed 200 business leaders across a variety of industries in the US, UK, and Canada who incorporate ASR tools and captioning in their work. It explores current attitudes on captioning and ASR technologies, uncovers opportunities for improvement, and identifies barriers that prevent companies from increasing their ASR usage.
The survey notes that although business leaders understand the importance and benefits of captioning and transcribing their content and experiences, 47% of companies polled were dissatisfied with the accuracy of their current ASR technologies.
“This reality, coupled with the finding that 70% of companies are using free, built-in tools, suggests that a significant proportion of ASR technologies aren’t cutting it,” the survey notes. “This finding represents an opportunity and a wake-up call for those not leveraging advanced ASR tools which offer ways to boost accuracy performance.”
The survey also examines the amount of content being captioned, the most common use cases of ASR and captioning tools, expectations for captioning use and investment in the coming year, the use of generative AI, and opinions on free, built-in ASR tools.
Highlights include:
- Captions are popular. Two-thirds of businesses polled say they’re captioning at least half of their audio and video content. More than half of respondents say that they caption 50-75% of their content, while 12% caption 75-99% of their content.
- ASR beyond accessibility. Companies are using ASR and other captioning tools for a wide range of business applications, demonstrating the versatility and usefulness of the technology. The most popular uses include reaching greater audiences, supporting internal company needs, and creating transcripts.
- Continued interest and investment. Nearly all respondents expect their investment in captioning and ASR tools to remain steady or increase in the coming year, with the majority also expressing an interest in exploring complementary generative AI technology to stay competitive.