With the tremendous rise in technology and advancements in every field, the new revolution is in the name of human-generated captions and machine-generated captions. Before we get down to analyzing which is better and why it is essential to understand the difference between them. Just as the name suggests, the human-generated captions are the by-product of humans, whereas the machine-generated captions are the ones that are done using the machines. The machine-generated captions are made using automated speech recognition.
Even though in today’s time and age, a man needs a machine for literally every big and small task in their life, there are still certain areas where humans are still dominant. The field of captioning being one of them. Even though it will not be wrong to say that human-generated captions are winners hands down and win entirely in the area of cost, TAT, etc., there are many such criteria where they lead the race. Let’s have a look at some of the points.
- Accuracy – It will not be wrong to say that the most significant difference between these two modes of captioning is accuracy. There is no hiding the fact that the accuracy at which a human captioner can deliver is far ahead and above the quality of captions produced by a machine. In factors like understanding and generating the words, the human captioners are far better positioned to deliver not just quickly but also accurately. Even though many companies claim that the results of their machine captions cross the marks of 96%. It is vital to understand the level of accuracy and most importantly, how long it has taken them to achieve that?
- Challenge for users with restrictions – In case of automated speech recognition, machine captioning can be delayed for long periods, line of tests can be skipped, and words do not always match up to what is being said. This can be seriously challenging for the deaf and for audiences with hard hearing as they will not be able to relate between the two. Again, in this case, human-generated captions are always sure to work better.
- Speech-language and technical terms – As humans, a person learns and comes across many different types of accents, words, and terms in their life. For them, it is far easier to pick up words and understand them than a machine. If the machine comes across a term that has not been fed into its systems, then the picture is sure to be disastrous.
- The display time for live captions – Needless to say, the display time for human-generated captions is much better than that of machine-generated. Since human resources, unlike machines, need no checking, they can be ready to use within 3-5 seconds. In the case of an ASR, all machine actions need to be checked manually to ensure they are error-free.
- Audio quality – One of the biggest advantages with the human-generated captions is that the voice modulation can be controlled and balanced as per their surroundings and environment. Humans can understand the need for changes and make them accordingly, but naturally, a machine cannot understand what is happening around them and will continue in the mode they have been set in.
We agree with the fact that with the many rich and wise investments in technology, it is growing at a very rapid speed. But if we talk about today, then it will not be wrong to say that human-generated captions are the way to go and a winner by all means.
