Let your voice write
Voice-to-text AI is a perfect assistant for writing first drafts using tools like AudioPen, Superwhisper, and Voicenotes
Hey The Discourse fam! In today’s piece I am going to cover a tool that has been critical to my workflow of late. It’s about voice-to-text AI and in particular using it to write first drafts.
I’ve increasingly started using voice-to-text a lot in my life with the advent of OpenAI’s voice-to-text AI, Whisper, and apps that build on top of it. It’s the fastest way to move from thought to action. And I can imagine why secretaries and personal assistants were a thing in the past. It’s way easier to speak than to write.
I use voice-to-text extensively for writing my daily to-do lists, emails, and messages, brainstorming, doing a brain dump, vent, and much more. But for today’s newsletter, we’re going to cover the use case of writing first drafts with your voice. Let’s dive in!
Writer’s block, no more
The challenge of writing first drafts is staring at a blank page most of the time and not knowing how to start. If you're an inexperienced writer, you may feel that your opening line should be a masterpiece and that the first version will be the final version. So you're aiming for perfection, but your brain and skills are letting you down. Hence, you quit.
Enter voice-to-text as first draft.
For most people, it’s easier to talk on a topic than write. Talking is natural for humans with at least 200,000 years of history, if not more. But we only picked up writing less than 5000 years ago in ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt.
Talking is unstructured. Unless you're giving a speech, it’s unlikely that you will be completely coherent with what you're saying from A to B to C. You will jump in and out of ideas.
Which makes it perfect for a first draft. The purpose of the first draft is to get your ideas down on paper. Imperfection is fine.
Voice-to-text AI
Once, when I had a hand injury (long story) in 2014 when I was in business school, I used the text-to-speech feature of the Mac a lot to write my assignments. It was way easier to talk and write, rather than use just one hand.
However, the quality of transcription was so low that it required a lot of changes, edits, and a lot of start-stops, making the process cumbersome and not as seamless.
The quality has significantly improved with the launch of OpenAI’s Whisper. It brings enhancements to accuracy, speed, and the ability to translate text from different languages. You can also add custom words, such as proper nouns like names, to the model so that those words are transliterated correctly.
There are quality client apps on top of Whisper that do a great job. One example is AudioPen.ai. Other alternatives are Superwhisper and voicenotes.
I spoke to the creator of AudioPen, Louis Pereira, who is a good friend, and wanted to get his views on how he is using AudioPen to write. Here’s what he had to say:
I think of AI-powered voice-to-text tools as the easiest way to take a fuzzy thought and turn it into clear text.
It's akin to putting an Instagram filter on a photo. You still need some skill to take a good photograph. In this case, you need to have a thought worth sharing – but AI helps apply a filter that can sharpen and fine-tune your thoughts, making it easier for others, or your future self, to read.
Some tools like AudioPen (shameless plug) let you choose the intensity of the filter you apply. You can get an almost exact transcript of your voice note, minus the grammatical errors, or choose to get a complete rewrite in a writing style of your choice.
I use it for all sorts of stuff – writing emails, journaling, capturing meeting notes, writing essays, or even creating to-do lists for my future self. And I'm only scratching the surface. I know folks who have used AudioPen to help write their PhD thesis, and some who write newspaper columns with AudioPen's help.
Superhuman’s founder Rahul Vohra had this to say about Superwhisper.
I’m very bullish on voice itself as an input mechanism. I’ve been using this app that’s really great called Super Whisper, and it’s built on Open AI’s Whisper technology. It lets me dictate in near real time into all my Mac apps. The technology has gotten so good that in a year or two we’ll be able to actually drive apps with just our voice.
Here’s another example of Nat Eliason using voice-to-text to write the first draft.
How I use Voice-to-text AI to write a draft
I start by talking about a topic. These recordings often go on for 10-15 minutes. I’m just trying to get all my thoughts about the topic recorded.
I use tools like AudioPen, Claude Opus, or Sonnet to lightly edit the transcript for grammatical mistakes and readability.
Then I use AI to organize and categorize my points into an outline, so I have a clear structure for the article. From there, I start building out the points, add screenshots, etc.
Finally, I again use AI to help me improve my writing, editing, and give me feedback to understand what I missed using Lex. I’ll write about my writing workflow in more detail later, but that’s how it is right now.
Frees you up
Writing becomes easier with Voice-to-text as your partner. You can increase your output and quality at the same time while sharing your authentic thoughts. AI doesn’t have to write for you, you can write with AI. It frees you to be a more curious person and connect different ideas.
In the world of AI, the skills that you need are to have a point of view, be bold to talk about it, have taste, have excellent editing skills, and not procrastinate and publish the article when done.
It also unshackles you from being in front of your laptop to type, provided you're ok with speaking into your phone in public. Typing on my phone is extremely cumbersome, very boomer of me, I know.
But I love “writing” while I am taking a walk in the park or while commuting.
It’s also accessible for people who are blind or have a missing limb.
Sparring partner
Many people have mentioned that they do most of the “writing” in conversation with others. When the updated version of ChatGPT Voice with low latency and high intelligence actually launches, that’s when you can use AI as a sparring partner to discuss, argue, and cover all angles to come up with a stellar first draft.
Encoding more information
When I think of what is additional information in voice rather than text, you can think of voice is characterized by tone and emotions. Imagine when you're using these tools, it’s able to analyze your emotions as you speak about something. We’ve already seen that Hume can understand emotions, and so can ChatGPT 4 omni.
For example, here is the part that you were most passionate about. Or here is the part that you were underconfident about — try to strengthen the argument or the belief.
Final Thoughts
Writing that is not published is not useful. Voice-to-text writing will help you eliminate writer’s block, improve your output, and get more useful things out there in the world.
Your first draft is usually a bunch of points that lack structure, coherence, or a clear idea. So instead of struggling with writing the first draft, why don't you speak your first draft and then write, edit, research, get feedback, and improve?
That's it for today, thanks for reading! What do you think of using Voice-to-text AI to write? Reply or comment below.
Give feedback and vote on the next topic here.
Talk to you soon! Follow me on Twitter @kavirkaycee
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