# Amazon Transcribe

> An AWS service that listens to audio and writes down what was said.

- Level: Intermediate
- Topics: AWS, AI
- URL: https://tidbit.legios.com.ar/amazon-transcribe/
- In Spanish: [Amazon Transcribe](https://tidbit.legios.com.ar/es/amazon-transcribe/)

**Amazon Transcribe** is speech-to-text as an API. You give it an audio or video file stored in S3, or a live audio stream, and it returns a transcript: the words spoken, with a timestamp for each one and a confidence score. It works in two modes: **batch**, for recordings you already have, and **streaming**, for audio arriving in real time, like a live call.

Beyond plain transcription, it can tell speakers apart ("speaker 1", "speaker 2"), learn your jargon through a **custom vocabulary** so product names come out right, and hide personal data like card numbers in the text. A variant called **Call Analytics** is built for contact centers and adds things like sentiment and call summaries.

Common uses are subtitles for videos, searchable archives of meetings or podcasts, notes from customer calls, and voice input inside apps. It is the mirror image of Amazon Polly, which turns text into speech. You pay per second of audio transcribed.

## An analogy

A court stenographer who never takes a break: they listen to the recording, type every word, and note who said each line and at what minute.

## Keep in mind

- Turns recorded or live audio into text with timestamps.
- Batch mode for files, streaming mode for real time.
- Can separate speakers, learn custom vocabulary and redact personal data.
- Billed per second of audio processed.

## Go deeper

- [What is Amazon Transcribe? (official docs)](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/transcribe/latest/dg/what-is.html)
- [Amazon Transcribe product page](https://aws.amazon.com/transcribe/)

## Related terms

- [Speech recognition](https://tidbit.legios.com.ar/speech-recognition/): Technology that turns spoken words into written text.
- [API](https://tidbit.legios.com.ar/api/): The menu of things one program lets another program ask for.
- [Amazon S3](https://tidbit.legios.com.ar/amazon-s3/): A giant online drawer for files, rented by the gigabyte.
- [Personal data and GDPR](https://tidbit.legios.com.ar/personal-data-and-gdpr/): Information about you, and the laws that say who can use it and how.
- [Amazon Polly](https://tidbit.legios.com.ar/amazon-polly/): An AWS service that turns written text into spoken audio.