Microsoft announces new transcription and voice commands features in Word

Microsoft today announced two new features in Word that are powered by the Azure Cognitive Services AI platform.

First, the new Transcribe in Word feature allows you to record your conversations directly in Word for the web and transcribe them automatically. Transcribe in Word can also detect different speakers. After the recording is done, you can revisit parts of the recording by playing back the time-stamped audio and you can even edit the transcript if you want corrections. You can also upload your existing audio and video recording to get transcription from Word. Transcribe supports .mp3, .wav, .m4a, or .mp4 files.

Transcribe in Word availability details:

Transcribe in Word is available in Word for the web for all Microsoft 365 subscribers and is supported in the new Microsoft Edge or Chrome browsers. Currently, transcribing audio into English (EN-US) is the only language supported. At this time, there is a five hour limit of transcription time per month for uploaded recordings and there is a file size limit of 200mb. Transcribe in Office mobile will be coming by the end of the year.

Microsoft Word Dictate feature now supports voice commands. For example, you can say things like “start list” or “bold last sentence”. You can find the full list of supported voice commands here.

Dictation with voice commands availability details:

Dictate with voice commands in Word is available in Word for the web and Office mobile for free when signed into your Microsoft account. Voice commands are coming to Word desktop and Word for Mac apps towards the end of the year for Microsoft 365 subscribers.

Source: Microsoft