AI-powered instruments like OpenAI’s Whisper have enabled many apps to make transcription an integral a part of their characteristic set for private note-taking, and the area has shortly flourished because of this. Apps like AudioPen, Cleft Notes, and TalkNotes have proliferated throughout app shops and the Web, however most provide a fairly restricted characteristic set: They allow you to report notes and transcribe them, with some providing summarization options, however there’s lots of floor to cowl by way of the options supplied.
The newest app within the area is Voicenotes. Constructed by creator-tipping platform Buymeacoffee‘s founder, Jijo Sunny, and his spouse Aleesha, Voicenotes goals to set itself aside by together with an AI assistant that allows you to ask questions of your previous notes, along with offering numerous options like summaries and totally different formatting choices.
The builders mentioned in a video that after they suffered a miscarriage, to distract themselves, they began constructing a voice notice instrument together with Jijo’s brother and Buymeacoffee co-founder, Joseph Sunny. When the couple was consulting medical professionals, they took lots of voice notes to seize all of the issues nurses and medical doctors had been saying so they may recall the data later. That additionally fueled the concept of getting a transcription instrument useful so that they didn’t have to replay notes repeatedly to recollect particulars.
Jijo and Aleesha shipped the primary model of the app in March to pick out testers, and so they made the online app public in April.
The app itself
Voicenotes’ webapp doesn’t require you to log in — you may instantly hit report and begin speaking and the app will transcribe.
You possibly can solely report voice notes as much as one-minute lengthy except you pay for the instrument. When you cease recording, you may tag the notes, edit them, and regenerate titles utilizing AI. It additionally enables you to use AI to reformat the notice — flip it right into a weblog submit, a tweet, a to-do record, or an e-mail — and the app will even generate a abstract of the notice and record the details.
There’s additionally an “Ask my AI” characteristic, which helps you to verbally search by your notes utilizing the AI assistant — if you wish to keep in mind what model of dishwashing liquid you added to your grocery record two months in the past, for instance.
The corporate has now launched each iOS and Android apps. It is a large benefit, given Cleft Notes solely works on Mac and iOS (nonetheless in beta). Whereas AudioPen is accessible as an online app from wherever, it could actually’t do background recording on iOS — in case your smartphone display screen will get locked or when you change to a different app, it’ll cease recording.
Voicenotes additionally makes use of AI to nudge you with prompts that you would be able to reply and report some notes.
Competitors and roadmap
Voicenotes brings some helpful options, however as we talked about above, it’s coming into an area that’s rising crowded shortly. It additionally has to take care of rivals who deliver higher options. Cleft Notes, for instance, permits for on-device transcription (an necessary level as a result of it retains your notes non-public as an alternative of sending it to a server for transcription), has higher Apple integration, and means that you can report notes as much as 10 minutes lengthy within the free tier. AudioPen provides you a ton extra choices for formatting your notes, which some could discover helpful.
Aside from competitors with different AI-powered voice notice apps, Voicenotes additionally has to compete with native apps reminiscent of Google Recorder on Pixel, and Samsung’s Transcribe Help — each apps can be found solely on choose fashions, however they may trickle right down to different fashions because the expertise advances.
The largest danger for all these apps can be Apple including transcription to its voice memo apps, since that might basically make third-party apps redundant on iOS units. Nonetheless, there is perhaps worth in providing cross-platform compatibility, higher formatting choices, and extra options.
You possibly can attempt Voicenotes without cost or pay $10 a month to unlock entry to raised fashions like GPT-4 Turbo and Claude Opus, in addition to take away the notice size restrictions. For a restricted period of time, you can even pay $50 for a “believer” plan and get entry to the app for all times (learn: so long as the developer retains supporting it). The corporate mentioned it has already gained $100,000 in income from subscriptions.
Jijo informed TechCrunch over e-mail that the app’s differentiation might be its “easy however elegant design,” its use of one of the best AI fashions, and the “Ask My AI” characteristic.
He added that Voicenotes will quickly be obtainable on smartwatches, too, desires to increase its performance throughout platforms as a real-time assistant. Moreover, it’s also engaged on turning voice notes into to-do lists with reminders.
