226 Comments

Can I use this to transcribe thoughts directly from my brain onto the page? Asking for a friend who sometimes struggles to write πŸ˜…πŸ‘€

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That's not going to be for another... *check watch*... six weeks. The singularity is nigh!

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^this.

Hopefully it'll work with background shower noise, as that's where I do my best writing in my head ...

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This is the feature I need! lol

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Same here!

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Hamish McK would love to achieve this. Just to please his WEF masters. He banned me from his own Substack page for 100 years recently. Watch this comment VAMOOSS....!

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LOL! But most likely true, I suspect. Hahaha!

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It is! I explain it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CKvKN5wjt4

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OK, I'm going to go watch it now. If I comment, it'll be under the avatar or title "LowerAstral". Looking forward to watching it.

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Thanks for your great words, Blaise! 😁

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Omg, yes! That would be optimal since I don’t get the same feel doing voice notes and writing it down, but if I’m in the car, it’s frustrating.

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Oh good grief. This is *brilliant*.

THANK YOU, TECH GODS OF SUBSTACK.

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I think it's neat.

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Any chance of seeing tech like this help create subtitles for our video uploads?

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Yes - we're on it.

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That's a great idea!

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That would be super helpful! I have started playing with Descript for subtitles, it works really well. But, if it is possible to generate them directly on Substack and update them live, it would be super impressive.

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Yes, would love to see this!

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As someone with an auditory processing disability, I love it when podcasts include transcripts. Thank you for making it easier for podcasters to be more accessible to people like me!

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Interesting. I was (finally) diagnosed with Auditory Dyslexia (when I was about thirty years old) while taking my then 18-month old son to one of the top ENTs in Los Angeles who, after asking me to hold my son in my lap while we tested his hearing, the doctor then decided that he wanted to do what he called " ... a sound-processing, listening, and hearing test." on me, as I kept misunderstanding the instructions that he was giving me while we were doing the hearing test on my son. By the way, this was in or around the year 1993. As it turned out, he ended up diagnosing me with auditory dyslexia, which, at that time had been a "new" discovery which started to become something of interest in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

I have written an entire article about this based on my own story which can be read on my Substack.

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This is wonderful added functionality. Always impressed by the speed and quality of what the Substack team ships.

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Can you provide audio for written articles? Since many people on my thread could be those with learning challenges or learning disorders, the audio would be greatly appreciated.

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@Hamish: I agree! I would love to see a reverse of this feature ... take my written articles and turn them into a podcast. I am sure that some of my audience would love to listen rather than read. It could create a new market for my Substack. I write much better than I speak, being a natural writer. I would find myself editing audio converted into a transcript, but not vice versa. I am sure there are some AI voices out there that would work great for a reverse feature and offer a much better voice than my very own! Please consider this. Thank you!

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Looks like I'm the only one not excited for this. In fact, I'm very wary of it, and every writer on here should be, too. Now that Substack has jumped on the AI bandwagon, I'd like to know what it's been trained on without consent, and if our writing/video has been used for it. Has my writing on here, or anyone else's for that matter, been completely open for outside sources to train on, too? I want to trust Substack, but this makes it hard to do so.

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Thank you for this! I totally share your concern. I moved to Substack to avoid being chased by ai, but here we go...

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And the fact everyone else seems so onboard with it...yeesh. They can say "oh it'll never replace human creators" all they want, but they've gone and let it in. Gonna be hard to trust them now. I'm sure some clause was slipped deep into the TOS, but I started writing before AI became a major public thing, so...yeah. Dunno about that. Wanted to believe in this service.

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I understand the concern, but like the Internet itself, Pandora’s box is open now. We can’t put it back. All we can do is advocate for some kind of regulation that will actually work – not that I think it will work.

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I don't think we should just roll over and accept it, a lot of people are happy to but you need to oppose it at every turn if you want any impact. Or at the very least let the people using know they aren't welcome. It needs heavy regulations not just from governments but from businesses big and small, and individuals who'll stick to principles. We can actually choose whether or not we let into our spaces, simple as that.

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It’s like LinkedIn where everybody goes β€œoh yeah lfg” whenever ai is mentioned.

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I agree, but I also admit that I used ChatGPT to help me organize and write a syllabus for two different classes that I'm going to be teaching at university next semester, and, admittedly, it has helped me to clarify in what order I want to organize how I want these two courses to play out. I also think that it's going to help me to help my students as well. Beyond that, I have not used ChatGPT or any other AI-related programs to do any other type of work. So, we'll see just where, exactly, Artificial "Intelligence?" will take us in the future. It has been proven long ago that AI can go south very quickly. Think of HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

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What you should be worried about in your own regard as a teacher is how it can and will spit out blatantly false information you will then have to fact check yourself, defeating the purpose. We've been getting on fine without it in our lives so far. It will become a crutch, not a "tool".

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Well, luckily, I've only used it to help me correct and lay-out my course in bullet points, really, for me, since I have Auditory Dyslexia and having this disorder causes me to mangle the meaning of things, although, ever since I was diagnosed, I have actually been able to organize how my brain interprets incoming audio information in a way that allows me to understand what I'm hearing by putting what I hear and read into bullet points, both in my brain (my mind), and on paper (digital and otherwise). So technically, I'm not using ChatGPT to be anything more than a fancy (and very fast) correction tool that I would otherwise have to do on my own over a much longer period of time.

Besides, the type of class that I'll be teaching isn't something that my students will be able to use to "cheat", since it's literally a "hands-on" class in every sense of the word. Traditional sculpting, which, so far, I beleive ChatGPT cannot do ... yet. Granted, we all know it's coming, and yes, I agree, possibly to our detriment.

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Wow, that's an intersesting point. I'm going to keep and eye on this and try to do some more research into it.

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SPECTACULAR!!!!!

P.S. Thank you, Hamish!

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Aug 30, 2023Liked by Hamish McKenzie

If it can generate an accurate transcript from a heavy Kiwi accent, there's nothing it can't do!

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no truer words have ever been spoken / written

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I wouldn’t call that a heavy accent at all.

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As a hearing disabled subscriber, rather than a content provider, I can't begin to express how grateful I will be for this advance which will break a great barrier for me and so many others! 😍

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Will this work with video posts too?

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I have to say Substack just keeps getting better and better! This is the very best website for writers, authors, editors and publishers! I began doing podcasts a few months ago and now have dozens of podcasts on my newsletter The Portland Daily Blink! I think it adds a very immediate and intimate tone to publishing, being able to hear a voice. Good show Substack! Your platform is top notch!

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Just as I was working my way into creating a podcast-focused Section and wondering whether Otter.ai had improved enough for transcripts, Substack gives me this. The best platform I've seen, bar none. Incredible work from the team! Thank you so much for giving us tools to reduce attrition and focus on sharing our work!

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The tool works also for different languages, but translates them in English. I would like in the future to be able to generate the text in the original language. Example, https://krepost.substack.com/p/manol-glishev

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Noted! We'll make this work.

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Should be working in Bulgarian now. Give it a shot!

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Wow, thank you Mike. It works πŸŽ‰ However, it seem that I cannot save any changes I make to the text. There are a few mistakes here and there, which I have tried to edit. Anyway, I cannot wait to announce transcripts to my audience.

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It is not working in portuguese, I uploaded a video in Portuguese, it correctly transcribed the text, but then translated it into English. I don't mind having it ALSO in English, but I would really like to have the transcription in Portuguese. How do we do that? The feature is amazing, the only issue seems to be the localization (or am I doing something wrong?).

Example: https://www.libertarios.pt/p/nacionalismo-vs-libertarianismo

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How long will it be until the transcript includes the names of the speakers on the left hand side before their dialogue? Rev.com has this feature for their automatic AI, so it must be possible.

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Wow this is awesome. I've been using a variety of other tools for this. Can't wait to use it.

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