WhatsApp has announced that it will make voice message transcripts available to all users, giving them another way to interact with voice messages within the app. The new option allows you to turn on automatic transcription of voice messages within the app, so you can read the text of voice notes left by others.
This helps bridge the gap between people who prefer to leave voicemails and those who dislike listening to them, while at the same time improving accessibility by allowing you to interact with your voicemails in any situation.
According to WhatsApp, the transcripts of voice messages are generated on your phone, and no one can listen to or read the messages, “not even WhatsApp”.
So, even if translated to text, the fundamental privacy and security elements of WhatsApp are preserved, and the options also support different languages.
“On iOS, supported languages vary depending on the operating system. For iOS 16 and above, supported languages include English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Turkish, Chinese, and Arabic. For iOS 17 and above, supported languages include Danish, Finnish, Malay, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Hebrew, and Thai. If you have Android, you can access transcripts in English, Portuguese, Spanish, and Russian.
This is a useful addition, allowing users to communicate in their preferred style and giving recipients the choice of how to respond to this. Message.
Of course, there is also a risk that these automatic transcripts are not 100% correct. However, in most cases, this is not a big problem, as the automatic transcription tools for social apps will let you know when there may be an error.
