The case for human oversight of artificial intelligence (AI) services continues, with the intertwined world of audio transcription, captioning, and automatic speech recognition (ASR) joining the call for applications that complement, not replace, human input.

Captions and subtitles serve a vital role in providing media and information access to viewers who are deaf or hard of hearing, and they've risen in popular use over the past several years. Disability advocates have pushed for better captioning options for decades, highlighting a need that's increasingly relevant with the proliferation of on-demand streaming services. Video-based platforms have quickly latched onto AI, as well, with YouTube announcing early tests of a new AI feature that summarizes entire videos and TikTok exploring its own chat bot.

So with the growing craze over AI as a buoy to tech's limitations, involving the latest AI tools and services in automatic captioning might seem like a logical next step.

3Play Media, a video accessibility and captioning services company, focused on the impact of generative AI tools on captions used primarily by viewers who are deaf and hard of hearing in its recently published 2023 State of Automatic Speech Recognition report. According to the findings, users have to be aware of much more than simple accuracy when new, quickly-advancing AI services are thrown in the mix.

3Play Media's report analyzed the word error rate (the number of accurately transcribed words) and the formatted error rate (the accuracy of both words and formatting in a transcribed file) of different ASR engines, or AI-powered caption generators. The various ASR engines are incorporated in a range of industries, including news, higher education, and sports.

Read the full article about AI and accessibility by Chase DiBenedetto at Mashable.