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And before Elana asks, yes, it's fine with Australian accents.

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Laughs. wondered about that.

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It was my first thought when I saw this post had landed 😂

How natural can your dictation be? The videos and podcasts that I have transcribed have been people speaking fairly naturally, with Australianisms like "G'day" getting all sorts of weird treatment even when you tell it the source language is Australian, but do you have to do a "HOW NOW BROWN COW" style enunciation or are you muttering furiously into the mic as you pace around your international super author lair?

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As of now, Mr./Ms. Robot can be best described as "adequate."

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That's almost certainly a startup-mode UI glitch. It'll be running locally and blatting text up on the screen before the next subscription cheque is due.

Where you'll really freak out though will be when it starts to run ahead of you, like predictive spelling correction does now. You'll question whether it's still you making up the story...

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I thought I'd give this a crack. Might be good for transcribing interviews (my pet hate and huge time suck). It put me on a waitlist with the following:

"Boom, you're on the list.

Expect to hear from us soon.

We're inviting new authors on board as quickly as we can.

Now get off the internet and go do some writing while you wait."

...good attitude.

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author

You could try OtterAi while you wait. My brother, a journalist, swears by them for transcribing interviews

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Mar 14Liked by John Birmingham

So, I had a go at Otter.ai and I'm impressed enough to sign up for a sub. This easily outperforms any transcription service I've used in the past. Should save me several days of grind per month. Thank you Birmo and thank your brother for the otters.

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Cheers. I'll give that a go and see how it works for me.

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"Eventually, I got pretty fluent. I learned to dictate my formatting and quotation marks and so on, but that took a long time" from your description I always imagined something like the chopped and precise language used by Thufir Hawat Dune speaking about the attacks on Arrakeen in the David Lynch Film.

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I dunno- I haven't had cause to use dictation yet because I do love the tactile feel of the keys and the instant feedback on-screen. See your last paragraph. I think this would be a major obstacle for me.

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