The Next-Gen A.I. Voice Recorder Is The PLAUD Note

Voice recorders have become old hat — sure they no longer have “moving” parts because they use solid-state memory and for sure they’re easy to access their digital files through connections to a computer or phone — but still? They pretty much all do the same thing and that’s boring. Not to mention still requiring a lot of work if you want to turn that digital recorded file into text (transcribed). So yeah it’s time for a next generation voice recorder that uses A.I. to do all that from the get-go. Which is what the PLAUD NOTE is all about.

The PLAUD NOTE starts out being a voice recorder using a rechargeable USB battery — but in functionality and intent it is very, very different from those conventional recorders. That’s because it’s ChatGPT empowered, and we’ll get to that in a moment.

Physically the PLAUD NOTE is a dark gray, substanitally larger than credit-card sized recorder with very little weight. On the front at the very top is the record button along with a selectable nub for switching between its two modes.

Also part of the package is a pouch-clip that this voice recorder fits inside of. This has a MagSafe magnet add-on on the back for attaching to compatible iPhones (the power charging connector tabs peek out of the bottom, btw). So that sliding nub on the front has a dual purpose: on one setting it records external audio (aka voice recordings), while the other setting is designed to record a conversation taking place on the iPhone

The reason this can work where other methods have failed is that the Plaud Note isn’t trying to “get into” the iPhone’s electronics, but is physically close enough to pick up both incoming/outgoing conversation. That the Plaud employs a dual pickup engine for the audio input, depending on whether it’s normal voice recording or from the phone makes quite the difference.

Of course ChatGPT is the big thrill here, taking the auto transcribe system and then provide a summary of it. What the app can do is take a recording that it has gotten and “transcribe” it to text, using AI. So the app is used to “absorb” the audio files (64GB of space to work with), and then a transcribing function can be activated, followed by a ChatGPT summary of what has been done.

Other functionality includes doing To-do lists, Mind maps and more. Sure they talk about AI taking away people’s jobs, but when we think about all the times we’ve needed a transcription of an interview but didn’t have the time/budget so had to groan our way through it, well this is just peaches. And using an interview as an example, the transcribing did a decent job with a success rate of close to 94%, just missing a few words here and there. And the ChatGPT-powered summary was pretty much on the money.

Now all this was possible due to having the subscription-based PLAUD NOTE app. The free app gives you basic functions (recording and syncing, Bluetooth, WiFi and 3 years of cloud storage), while the PLAUD AI allows for voice-to-text transcriptions, works with 57 languages and has ChatGPT capabilities (the summaries, meeting notes, etc.) and requires a monthly fee.

The free PLAUD App makes it incredibly user-friendly and intuitive. On top of that, PLAUD AI offers voice-to-text transcription and ChatGPT-enabled capabilities, including automated summaries, meeting notes, to-do lists, and mind maps.

[Note: As is the case with MagSafe attachments in general, there will be some iPhone cases that don’t allow the magnetic attraction to “grab hold” of the phone, so YMMV]

The whole idea of being able to record a conversation is not something new, but the advent of the smartphone has made it much more difficult to accomplish. Not being able to access the internal software of the iPhone has made it necessary for a recording mechanism to find other means — which is why the PLAUD has become so successful.

For more details on the PLAUD note, go to https://www.plaud.ai/