Speechify Enhances Chrome Extension with Voice Typing and Virtual Assistant

Speechify is primarily known as a tool for listening to articles, PDFs, and documents. The company has now enhanced its Chrome extension with voice detection capabilities, introducing features for voice typing and a conversational voice assistant to answer your questions.

The past year has seen a surge in voice detection tools, driven by significant improvements in speech recognition model quality. Speechify is capitalizing on this trend by launching its own dictation tool, initially supporting English. Similar to other solutions, Speechify’s voice typing automatically corrects errors and removes filler words.

During my brief test of just over a day, I found that Speechify’s tool has considerable room for improvement. For example, it functions well in Gmail and Google Docs, but on websites like WordPress, I encountered issues with activating the voice dictation feature and achieving reliable performance. The company stated it is progressively optimizing the tool for popular sites.

Regarding accuracy, the tool's word error rate was higher than competing products like Wispr Flow, Willow, and Monologue. Speechify noted that its model improves with more frequent use, leading to a gradual reduction in error rates.

The startup is also introducing a conversational voice assistant accessible from a sidebar within your browser. You can ask it questions about the webpage you're viewing, such as "what are the three main points?" or "explain this in simpler terms."

While ChatGPT and Gemini offer conversational voice modes, Speechify argues that these features are secondary in those platforms. In contrast, the startup positions voice interaction as the core, front-and-center experience of its own tool.

“We believe text-based chat will always be the default experience when users open ChatGPT or Gemini apps. It’s what their audience expects. Voice interaction will likely remain a secondary feature—often an afterthought for these providers. Our years of experience with Speechify have shown us a significant segment of the market, including our own users, who prefer voice as the primary, default mode whenever they interact with AI,” explained Rohan Pavuluri, the company’s chief business officer, in an email to TechCrunch.

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One current limitation is that Speechify’s assistant is not compatible with browsers that have built-in sidebar assistants, such as OpenAI’s Atlas, Perplexity’s Comet, and Dia. The startup is not overly concerned, as its extension is primarily designed for Chrome and its vast user base.

Speechify plans to integrate both its voice typing and voice assistant features across all its desktop and mobile applications in a phased rollout.

The company also aims to develop AI agents capable of performing tasks autonomously. While the full roadmap wasn't disclosed, one example given was having the agent make phone calls to schedule appointments or wait on hold with customer service. Other firms like Truecaller and Cloacked are pursuing similar objectives.