Adding captions to audio and video is a major accessibility goal, allowing people with different abilities to consume and understand audio and video content. The holy grail has always been live captioning of content in real-time, and with the Pixel 4 Google is now one step closer to that reality.
Google’s new Live Caption, unveiled a few months ago but featured in the 2019 Made by Google Event, is now available and can automatically live caption all video and audio content on your device or the cloud.
Thanks to the new Neural Core on the Pixel 4, you can even live caption content stored on your phone without any network access – as long as it’s in English.
The only real exception to Live Caption’s current abilities is that it won’t work with live phone and video calls, this a hurdle we’re sure Google will overcome in time. Activating Live Caption does come with a warning that it will consume more battery, but for many the tradeoff might well be worth it.
In addition to Pixel 4, Live Caption will roll out to Pixel 3, Pixel 3 XL, Pixel 3a and Pixel 3a XL later this year, and Google says it’s working closely with other manufacturers to make it more widely available in the coming year.
