That was the first question our developer Robin-Manuel asked our digital service EVE. People talking to computers. Sounds silly at first? Ok, here’s the story, it starts with a problem!
I had my first thoughts about EVE on August 7, 2017. Once again, we flew several stenographers to another country for our client Microsoft so that they could take notes of what someone was saying on stage at an event. Why did we do this? The live subtitles are intended to help people with hearing impairments. And according to the WHO, there are 466 million of them. But: stenographers are always booked twice, because taking notes so quickly is so exhausting that no one can do it for two hours at a time. Then there are flights, hotels and accommodation. If the event has several presentations at the same time, this adds up to huge sums. But at the same time, these subtitles are important and if you don’t include them, you exclude them – there are no shades of gray. So a solution had to be found.
After around 1.5 years, we are proud and delighted to announce the launch of EVE. Our digital service will be available from tomorrow. EVE generates text from speech. Fully automatically and with the help of artificial intelligence. It currently supports 30 languages.
EVE makes events more inclusive! EVE makes even small events more accessible and easier to understand. Because subtitles not only help people with hearing impairments, but also foreign-language visitors. Those who can read along understand more! The USA has gone much further in this respect. Every show and every TV station has to provide subtitles. But here, too, manual typing is the order of the day. No more of that! During development, we discovered a second vision and only realized after some time how big this “side effect” actually is:
Today, we share every photo on Instagram and every thought on Twitter. But where are all the keynotes, lectures, events and even church services? If I wasn’t there, then I missed the opportunity. Luckily, EVE generates a live transcript. Missed your flight to the keynote? Student overslept the lecture? Presentation in another country? No problem! Just click and download. Suddenly all that great content is available digitally. For blog articles, the intranet or event follow-up. For all those who are now thinking: “Oh, The Circle sends its regards” – you naturally have full control over your transcripts and their downloads at all times.
How good EVE is depends on the language chosen, the speaker, the content (jargon?) and the sound quality. But in all our tests there was one common feedback: Wow! In German, EVE achieves an average of over 90% error-free recognition, and in English the figure is noticeably higher at 95%. That’s why a proofreader can be switched in at any time. The proofreader then receives the recognized text in chunks and can approve it – only then does it appear. When the president is on stage, several proofreaders simply share the work. Then you can easily achieve 100%. The big difference: stenographers are highly specialized and their work cannot be done by just anyone. But anyone who is fit at the keyboard can correct EVE.
EVE is like a website. Smartphone, tablet, laptop or desktop? For EVE: it doesn’t matter! OS? No matter! Browser? No matter! Simply feed the microphone sound into the laptop, open the website and press record. EVE now displays the live subtitles on the predefined website. The font, size and color can of course be freely selected. Each viewer can access the website themselves, e.g. on their smartphone. At the same time, the organizer shows the subtitles on an extra display or projects them on the large stage. All common devices, OS and browsers also work for the output. EVE also fills the transcript live. If someone clicks on Download during the event, the current status is displayed as a PDF.
Over the next few weeks, EVE will be learning many new languages and will have mastered the world’s 10 largest languages by the end of the quarter. A translation function is also planned. The presentation is in Chinese and the viewer understands nothing? Never mind, simply change the language in the output window and a live machine translation will be provided.