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139 points the_king | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.223s | source

Hey HN - It’s Finn and Jack from Aqua Voice (https://withaqua.com). Aqua is fast AI dictation for your desktop and our attempt to make voice a first-class input method.

Video: https://withaqua.com/watch

Try it here: https://withaqua.com/sandbox

Finn is uber dyslexic and has been using dictation software since sixth grade. For over a decade, he’s been chasing a dream that never quite worked — using your voice instead of a keyboard.

Our last post (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39828686) about this seemed to resonate with the community - though it turned out that version of Aqua was a better demo than product. But it gave us (and others) a lot of good ideas about what should come next.

Since then, we’ve remade Aqua from scratch for speed and usability. It now lives on your desktop, and it lets you talk into any text field -- Cursor, Gmail, Slack, even your terminal.

It starts up in under 50ms, inserts text in about a second (sometimes as fast as 450ms), and has state-of-the-art accuracy. It does a lot more, but that’s the core. We’d love your feedback — and if you’ve got ideas for what voice should do next, let’s hear them!

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fxtentacle ◴[] No.43637679[source]
This looks like it'll slurp up all your data and upload it into a cloud. Thanks, no. I want privacy, offline mode and source code for something as crucial to system security as an input method.

"we also collect and process your voice inputs [..] We leverage this data for improvements and development [..] Sharing of your information [..] service providers [..] OpenAI" https://withaqua.com/privacy

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jmcintire1 ◴[] No.43640415[source]
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

replies(2): >>43641065 #>>43642213 #
mrtesthah ◴[] No.43641065[source]
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".
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1. shinycode ◴[] No.43642111[source]
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.