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Live Captions on Android can now help you read between the lines
- Google is enhancing Live Caption with Expressive Captions on Android.
- Expressive Captions use AI to recognize tone, volume, and ambient sounds and convey them with stylized captions and labels.
- The feature is available in the US for English on devices running Android 14 and above.
Google introduced Live Caption as a feature back in Google I/O 2019. This underrated accessibility feature can create captions of any speech coming out of your device. While the implementation is quite good by itself, plain and simple text on your screen does a poor job of capturing the intensity and emotions of the scene’s audio. Google is now upgrading Live Caption with Expressive Captions, using AI to capture the intensity of emotion of words and sounds and display it through text.
Google is introducing Expressive Captions in the US in English for Android devices running Android 14 and above that already support Live Caption.
Expressive Captions use AI to communicate tone, volume, environmental cues, and human noises. While these may look like small things to obsess over, they play a significant role in conveying the message beyond plain and simple words. With the help of stylized captions and labels, captions come closer to emulating the vibrancy of audio.
Expressive Captions adds the following to Live Caption:
- All CAPs: Captions will now reflect the intensity of speech with capitalization, so users will know when a friend excitedly wishes them a “HAPPY BIRTHDAY!” and not just a demure “Happy birthday!”
- Vocal bursts: Captions will identify more sounds, like sighing, grunting, and gasping, giving users essential expressions of tone.
- Ambient sound: Additional noises in the foreground and background, like applause and cheers, will now be labeled to give a fuller picture of what’s happening in the environment.
Since Expressive Captions are part of Live Caption, they are available across apps on your phone. You can use Expressive Captions with media like livestreams, social media posts, video messages from friends and family, and more. Live Captions and Expressive Captions are generated in real-time on your device, so you can use them even in airplane mode.
Do you use Live Captions? Do you like the upgrade to Expressive Captions? Let us know in the comments below!