Universal 2 addresses the part that makes transcripts actually usable: getting names, numbers, and formatting right automatically. The 24% improvement in proper noun recognition and 21% gain on numerical data are not just benchmark wins - they translate directly into transcripts that need significantly less manual cleanup.
What stands out is the formatting layer. Handling punctuation, casing, email addresses, and monetary amounts consistently means the output is ready to work with immediately, not just technically correct. For anyone processing call recordings, meeting transcripts, or interview audio at any volume, that reduction in editing time compounds quickly.
The free tier makes it straightforward to evaluate before scaling, which is the right approach for a tool that lives or dies by how it performs on your specific data.
We also reviewed Universal 2 on our platform https://www.producthunt.com/products/completeaitraining-com — where we list and categorize 7,000+ AI tools for different jobs and skills.
AssemblyAI
Excited to be back on Product Hunt announcing the introduction of our 🆕 Dictation API.
Every product team we talk to is adding dictation right now: notes apps, clinical tools, coding agents, booking flows. And almost all of them hit the same problem, Speech-to-text gives you every word the person said, filler and false starts included. What dictation needs is the exact text the person meant, ready to hit send.
That is exactly what the Dictation API was built for. With one call, you get finished text back, corrections fixed, stutters removed -"ums" and "ahs" and all. In our benchmarks, it has been lightening fast: short clips returned in under one second (p50 at 134ms). It runs on our flagship Universal-3.5 Pro, covers 19 languages, and is fully customizable via prompting.
I built the live demo into our product page, and the thing that sold me was watching the verbatim transcript and the finished text land side by side, with the response time printed right there beside it, all included in the API's response in under a second.
If you'd rather try it yourself, our team built and released Blurt today alongside the launch. Blurt is a free, open-source macOS dictation app designed for you to hold a key, talk and get finished text right where your cursor is.
Our team will be here all day in the comments, and we're running a Dictation Hackathon in our Discord right now. So join us to chat about what you're building dictation into, get help with whats breaking, and let us know what you think!
AssemblyAI
@devon_malloy excited for the launch