Speechify is largely a tool that helps you listen to articles, PDFs, and documents. The company is now adding voice detection features to its Chrome extension, including voice typing and a voice assistant that answers your questions.
Over the past 12 months, voice detection tools have seen a proliferation, thanks to the overall improvement in the quality of speech recognition models. Speechify hitches its wagon to this train and launches its own dictation tool with support for English. Just like other dictation tools, Speechify’s voice typing corrects errors and removes filler words.
During my short test of just over a day, I felt there was a lot of room for improvement in Speechify’s tool. For example, the tools work well with Gmail and Google Docs, but on sites like WordPress, I had trouble triggering voice dictation and getting it to work properly. The company said it is gradually adding optimization for popular sites.
In terms of accuracy, the word error rate was higher than some other tools like Wispr Flow, Willow, and Monologue. Speechify noted that its model learns faster as you use it more and that the error rate will gradually decrease.
The startup is also launching a conversational voice assistant that sits in your browser’s sidebar. You can ask questions on the website, such as “what are the three key ideas?” or “explain this in simpler terms.”
While ChatGPT and Gemini have conversational modes, Speechify’s argument is that they are an afterthought in their apps, and the startup’s own tool puts voice front and center.
“We believe that chat will always be the default user experience in ChatGPT and Gemini when you open the apps. That’s what their users expect. Voice will always be secondary – and in many cases, an afterthought for ChatGPT and Gemini. We know from several years of building Speechify that a large portion of the market, which includes our users, wants voice to be the primary default setting every time they open an app and talk to the AI,” Rohan said Pavuluri, commercial director of the company. TechCrunch by email.
Techcrunch event
San Francisco
|
October 13-15, 2026
One notable issue is that Speechify’s helper does not currently work with browsers with built-in sidebar helpers such as OpenAI’s Atlas, Perplexity’s Comet, and Dia. The startup isn’t too worried about it since the extension is largely aimed at Chrome and its huge user base.
Speechify said it plans to gradually include voice typing and a voice assistant in all of its desktop and mobile apps.
The startup also wants to develop agents who perform tasks on your behalf. The startup didn’t reveal its full roadmap, but gave an example: making calls to make appointments or waiting on hold with a company’s customer support. Other companies like Truecaller and Cloacked are pursuing similar goals.
