Buymeacoffee’s founder has constructed an AI-powered voice notice app

AI-powered instruments like OpenAI’s Whisper have enabled many apps to make transcription an integral a part of their characteristic set for private note-taking, and the house has shortly flourished consequently. Apps like AudioPen, Cleft Notes, and TalkNotes have proliferated throughout app shops and the Web, however most provide a reasonably restricted characteristic set: They allow you to report notes and transcribe them, with some providing summarization options, however there’s lots of floor to cowl when it comes to the options provided.

The newest app within the house is Voicenotes. Constructed by creator-tipping platform Buymeacoffee‘s founder, Jijo Sunny, and his spouse Aleesha, Voicenotes goals to set itself aside by together with an AI assistant that allows you to ask questions of your previous notes, along with offering numerous options like summaries and totally different formatting choices.

The builders mentioned in a video that after they suffered a miscarriage, to distract themselves, they began constructing a voice notice instrument together with Jijo’s brother and Buymeacoffee co-founder, Joseph Sunny. When the couple was consulting medical professionals, they took lots of voice notes to seize all of the issues nurses and docs have been saying so they may recall the knowledge later. That additionally fueled the concept of getting a transcription instrument useful in order that they didn’t must replay notes repeatedly to recollect particulars.

Jijo and Aleesha shipped the primary model of the app in March to pick out testers, they usually made the online app public in April.

The app itself

Voicenotes’ webapp doesn’t require you to log in — you’ll be able to immediately hit report and begin speaking and the app will transcribe.

You’ll be able to solely report voice notes as much as one-minute lengthy until you pay for the instrument. When you cease recording, you’ll be able to tag the notes, edit them, and regenerate titles utilizing AI. It additionally helps you to use AI to reformat the notice — flip it right into a weblog put up, a tweet, a to-do listing, or an electronic mail — and the app may also generate a abstract of the notice and listing the details.

There’s additionally an “Ask my AI” characteristic, which helps you to verbally search via your notes utilizing the AI assistant — if you wish to keep in mind what model of dishwashing liquid you added to your grocery listing two months in the past, for instance.

The corporate has now launched each iOS and Android apps. This can be a large benefit, given Cleft Notes solely works on Mac and iOS (nonetheless in beta). Whereas AudioPen is accessible as an online app from anyplace, it may well’t do background recording on iOS — in case your smartphone display will get locked or for those who change to a different app, it’ll cease recording.

Voicenotes additionally makes use of AI to nudge you with prompts you could reply and report some notes.

Competitors and roadmap

Voicenotes brings some helpful options, however as we talked about above, it’s getting into an area that’s rising crowded shortly. It additionally has to take care of rivals who convey higher options. Cleft Notes, for instance, permits for on-device transcription (an necessary level as a result of it retains your notes non-public as a substitute of sending it to a server for transcription), has higher Apple integration, and lets you report notes as much as 10 minutes lengthy within the free tier. AudioPen offers you a ton extra choices for formatting your notes, which some could discover helpful.

Aside from competitors with different AI-powered voice notice apps, Voicenotes additionally has to compete with native apps reminiscent of Google Recorder on Pixel, and Samsung’s Transcribe Help — each apps can be found solely on choose fashions, however they may trickle all the way down to different fashions because the know-how advances.

The most important threat for all these apps could be Apple including transcription to its voice memo apps, since that might basically make third-party apps redundant on iOS gadgets. Nonetheless, there is likely to be worth in providing cross-platform compatibility, higher formatting choices, and extra options.

You’ll be able to strive Voicenotes totally free or pay $10 a month to unlock entry to higher fashions like GPT-4 Turbo and Claude Opus, in addition to take away the notice size restrictions. For a restricted period of time, you may as well pay $50 for a “believer” plan and get entry to the app for all times (learn: so long as the developer retains supporting it). The corporate mentioned it has already gained $100,000 in income from subscriptions.

Jijo advised TechCrunch over electronic mail that the app’s differentiation shall be its “easy however elegant design,” its use of the very best AI fashions, and the “Ask My AI” characteristic.

He added that Voicenotes will quickly be obtainable on smartwatches, too, needs to increase its performance throughout platforms as a real-time assistant. Moreover, it is usually engaged on turning voice notes into to-do lists with reminders.