AiThority Interview with Yair Amsterdam, CEO of Verbit

Yair Amsterdam, CEO of Verbit, talks about the development of Verbit’s AI-powered solutions and highlights the emerging trends in AI and transcription, emphasizing the future potential of AI to understand context and drive meaningful actions from speech in real-time.

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Please tell us about your tech journey.

I have more than two decades in the global tech industry, working with companies like Verint, Ex Libris, Pro Quest and, now, Verbit. I started as a developer and took on more roles and responsibilities within those companies, serving as Chief Operating Officer at three different companies and currently serving as Chief Executive Officer at Verbit. I enjoy working for companies that do good and have a noble cause, like those focused on higher education and accessibility. It keeps me excited and makes me feel engaged.

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Can you highlight some of the solutions to the top operational challenges in integrating AI with human transcription services?

Automatic speech recognition (ASR) programs have been around for decades but, until recently, the quality of those programs have left a lot to be desired. Most ASR technologies can’t understand the unique terms, acronyms, slang and other sector-specific language used today, meaning most ASR-produced transcripts and captions are error-ridden and fall far short of their promise.

That’s why Verbit built its own ASR solution, complete with bespoke term boosting, dynamic domain dictionaries, and integrations into a host of platforms, to finally bring human-level accuracy to AI-generated transcripts and incubate a new sector called “verbal intelligence.”

As a leading provider of AI verbal intelligence, we set the standard for accuracy, efficiency and affordability, helping businesses, organizations and individuals of all sizes “make words work” by turning spoken audio and video into accessible and actionable text.

How is Verbit leveraging AI and human solutions to enhance its product offerings?

With the advent of generative AI, speech-to-text technology is rapidly advancing and Verbit is a major driver of this moment.

Earlier this year, we launched a new AI-powered solution ─ Captivate™ ─ that combines industry leading technology with decades of experience to provide high-accuracy transcripts and captions, guaranteed uptimes, customizable solutions, and integrations with multiple platforms. Built in-house by transcription, speech, and machine learning experts, Captivate is trained using diverse language models enabling it to understand languages, accents, and speech patterns better than generic ASR engines. The technology is scalable, can be tailored to the individual customer and applied to various ASR core models depending on their specific need.

In some cases, Verbit leans on its pool of expert human captioners to perform work that requires specific care. These same captioners are also utilized to train Verbit’s Captivate and prepare customized models for Verbit’s customers.

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Discuss the role of technology in maintaining Verbit’s competitive edge in the transcription industry.

Technology is at the core of our ability to maintain a competitive edge in the transcription industry. It’s an essential piece of the company’s DNA. It’s our technology, consistent accuracy and expertise that set us apart.

Our AI-powered, technology driven solutions help customers unlock the value of speech – making their words work by capturing and documenting them with our speech recognition technology, extracting additional insights, and quickly returning their value to enhance the messages that matter to you.

Our technology layers are augmented by human support to guarantee top-quality service. Combining human intelligence with our proprietary, continuously improving AI-based ASR​ engine provides the most accurate and reliable transcription solution on the market.

What are some emerging trends in the transcription and accessibility space that Verbit is focusing on?

More and more businesses are using artificial intelligence (AI) to keep up with their competition, with most citing increased efficiencies and automation among the driving forces pushing companies to employ advances in AI technology. And the legal sector is no different as lawyers and legal professionals are increasingly adopting AI to streamline the legal transcription processes, enhance accuracy and improve efficiency.

Verbit’s new Legal Real-Time offering, developed using our Captivate technology, is revolutionizing court reporting by providing accurate live transcription during depositions, hearings, arbitrations, examinations, trials and other legal proceedings. Our innovative solution provides increased efficiency to court reporters while offering real-time access to attorneys.

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What emerging trends in voice AI and human collaboration do you anticipate will shape the future of the industry?

We believe the next big thing in the AI productivity revolution will come from how we capture, understand and apply speech.

Our Captivate platform is the first step in our vision to create a world where speech can be seamlessly converted into meaningful actions, where words are captured, transcribed, reviewed, and saved, and where “actions” can be derived from those words in the moment. Understanding speech is the next frontier and where most major developments are now focused. Being able to understand context has come within reach with the dispersion of LLMs. Creating moments where AI can understand real intent, can provide suggestions in real-time on what question to ask or drive a group towards decisions is the next step. A world where insights aren’t distilled but revealed…instantaneously. That’s the future Verbit is building, where we truly “make words work.”

Before we wrap up, what advice would you give to aspiring leaders in the SaaS and technology sectors?

It’s important to have a clear, bold strategy – to recognize where you’ve been and know where you are leading to. Be able to articulate your vision to customers, employees and investors.

You can’t do it all by yourself, and it’s important to surround yourself with a strong team that helps you drive execution. Trust them to execute on the company’s visions and goals. Be flexible! The decisions you made yesterday likely will need to be slightly tuned and, sometimes, drastically changed.

But, perhaps most of all, enjoy the journey.

Thank you, Yair, for your insights; we hope to see you back on AiThority.com soon.

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