Imo it is a question of right tool for the right job, adjusted for differences between people. For me, the use case that made our product click was prompting Cursor while coding. Then I wanted to use it whenever I talked to chatgpt -- it's much faster to talk and then read, and repeat.
Voice is great for whenever the limiting factor to thought is speed of typing.
fair point. offline+local would be ideal, but as it stands we can't run asr and an llm locally at the speed that is required to provide the level of service we want to.
given that we need the cloud, we offer zero data retention -- you can see this in the app. your concern is as much about ux and communications as it is privacy
The problem if you actually need the cloud is that it kind of completely destroys your business model. OpenAI is bleeding money every month because they massively subsidize the hosting cost of their models. But eventually they will have to post a profit. And then if they know that your product is completely dependent on their API, they can milk you until there's no profits left for you.
And self-hosting real-time streaming LLMs will probably also come out at 50 cents per hour. Arguing a $120/month price for power users is probably going to be very difficult. Especially so if there is free open-source alternatives.
MacWhisper does realtime system-wide dictation on your local machine (among other things). Just a one-time fee for an app you download -- the way shareware is supposed to be. Of course it doesn't use MoE transcription with 6 models like Aqua Voice, but if you guys expect to be acquired by Apple (that is your exit strategy, right?), you're going to need better guarantees of privacy than "we don't log".
I downloaded the turbo whisper model optimized for Mac, created a python script that get the mic input and paste the result. The python script is LLM generated and it works with pushing a key.
For 80% of the functionality for free and done locally.
We have thought about this: there are some boring reasons that it doesn't make sense to do right now but I would definitely be interested in learning about your use case and keeping you posted if and when we decide to do it!
Thank you for trying it! Our goal is to make it not just a suitable alternative but way better than your keyboard. Still a lot of work to do, but that is the fun part :)
Voice is great for whenever the limiting factor to thought is speed of typing.