Aiko

Aiko is a super handy Mac app that lets you use Whisper, a cool speech recognition system from OpenAI. Whisper can accurately transcribe audio, thanks to a huge and diverse dataset. This means it gets natural speech really well! Plus, it supports tons of languages and can even translate on the fly.

How Aiko Works

With Aiko, you have an easy-to-use interface for Whisper right on your desktop. You can import audio or video files, and the app will transcribe them for you. Want to record your voice? No problem! Just hit record, and Aiko processes it live.

Impressive Accuracy

Whisper is pretty amazing. It can recognize language even from not-so-great audio sources. It also adds punctuation and organizes text into paragraphs, which makes you think about how good AI has become!

Real-World Testing

I tested it with both English and French audio that wasn’t exactly top quality or recent. I was surprised to find almost no errors! Sure, sometimes the punctuation differed from human transcriptions, but it was always grammatically correct.

Translation Capabilities

Another cool feature? Whisper can take any supported language's audio and translate it into English while transcribing! This opens up so many possibilities for different uses.

User-Friendly Features

Aiko makes using OpenAI’s system super simple. Just load your audio or video files and let the app do its thing. The language detection happens automatically, but if you want to select it yourself, that’s an option too.

Exporting Your Text

Once the transcription is done, you can easily copy the text to your clipboard or export it somewhere else. Just keep in mind that editing isn't supported after transcription is complete; you'll need to start over if you want to record something new.

A Few Minor Issues

There are a couple of small quirks worth mentioning. First off, while automatic translation can be turned off, I found it tricky at times—like when a file started in English but had more non-English content later on; everything got translated anyway!

The second issue relates to recording directly through a microphone. You can't pause recordings, which means if you need a break mid-transcription, you'll have to save what you've got and start again without picking up where you left off. Adding a preview option for transcribed text would be super helpful too!

Final Thoughts on Aiko

Overall, Aiko is a fantastic way to tap into all that OpenAI's Whisper offers right on your Mac. While it's not perfect—it could use some tweaks—it's well-designed and works completely offline! Best part? It’s totally free since everything runs right from your device without needing the Whisper API.
Download Aiko here!