WhatsApp is developing a transcription feature that can convert voice messages to text. This feature will certainly be useful for users who are reluctant to listen to long voice messages.
WhatsApp users on Android can actually convert voice messages into text messages, but must use a third-party application. Now that WhatsApp has developed its own transcription feature, users no longer need third-party apps to access this feature.
This new feature announced by WABetaInfo is still under development for WhatsApp on iOS. It is not yet known when this feature will proceed to the beta trial stage, then roll out to all users.
WABetaInfo says in the process the voice messages will not be sent to WhatsApp or Facebook to be converted to text. This process will be carried out entirely on the user's phone and using Apple technology.
These voice messages will be used by Apple to help improve its voice recognition technology, but these messages will not be linked to the user's identity.
This transcription feature is optional, but when activated the user must give special permission to WhatsApp to access the voice recognition feature as below.
After granting this permission, users can immediately convert voice messages to text. WhatsApp will open a new page called 'Transcript', where users can also choose a specific time, as quoted from WABetaInfo, Monday (13/9/2021).
When a message is transcribed for the first time, the transcription result will be stored locally in the WhatsApp database so that users don't have to re-transcribe if they want to go back to viewing the contents of the conversation later.
This transcription feature has just been developed for the iOS version of WhatsApp. WABetaInfo doesn't know when this feature will be developed for the Android version of WhatsApp.
But usually WhatsApp always develops the same features for Android and iOS. So there is a possibility that the same feature will be present in Android although the way it works may be a bit different.