A key resource used by the Wave Media Staff is Otter.ai, a website that we use to convert the recorded audio from an interview into text.

Having something to transcribe audio into text is incredibly useful and convenient, but like us, the AI is not perfect.

Sometimes it has poor grammar, sometimes it turns an interview into gibberish, and sometimes it makes a completely different story altogether.

These are just a few of the miscues I’ve encountered while using Otter.ai.

• “He tried to like put his camera in the hallway and his Germany lived right into Canada.”
• “A lot of the stuff they said was totally useless tells us I didn’t really learn much. But it was really, it was a good experience. I was inspired.”
• “Tomorrow Tomorrow, going up to Tennessee. That’s it’s gonna be alright, I guess. gonna be all right?”
• “I get up and I’m just like you know, I just you know, I just I don’t know the words to explain it, I just do.”
• “Building off the Affer mentioned, could this also keep track of tardy?”
• “And I can’t tell if my THS students are actually mine. Or if I have somehow found that I have Shannon Red Raider that just wants to be on my campus during class time.”
• “Hi, my name is Grant Andrew”
• “Hi, my name is Grant Ninja”
• “Hi, my name is Grant Edgar”
• “Hello, this is Grant Audrey”
• “Hi my name is and my question is why can’t we have A later start time”

It definitely isn’t fun having to go back and listen through an interview you just had because Otter.ai turned an important question into gibberish, something quite ironic considering we use Otter for convenience.

But while Otter.ai may never be able to spell “Grant Edger” it still succeeds to a degree that has made it a key part of the process when writing stories for the THS Current.

So even if Otter.ai may occasionally make our job a little harder than it has to be, generally it makes our job way, way easier.