Speechify it was largely a tool that helps you listen to articles, PDFs and documents. The company is now adding voice recognition features Chrome extensionincluding voice typing and a voice assistant that answers your questions.
In the past 12 months, there has been a proliferation of voice detection tools, thanks to the overall improvement in quality in speech recognition models. Speechify is hitching its wagon to this train and launching its own dictation tool with support for English. Just like other dictation tools, Speechify’s voice typing corrects errors and removes filler words.
In my short trial of just over a day, I felt that 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 getting voice dictation to work well. The company said it is gradually adding optimization for popular locations.
In terms of accuracy, the word error rate was higher than some other tools such as Wispr Flow, Willow and Monologue. Speechify noted that its model learns faster the more you use it, and the error rate will gradually decrease.
The startup also launches a voice chat assistant that sits in your browser’s sidebar. You can ask him questions about the site, such as “what are the three main ideas?” or “explain it in simpler terms.”
While ChatGPT and Gemini have chat features, Speechify’s argument is that they are treated as backends in their apps, and that the startup’s 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 many years of building Speechify that there is a large portion of the market, including our users, that wants a default voice app as the main conversation.” Pavuluri, the company’s chief business officer, told TechCrunch via email.
Techcrunch event
San Francisco
|
13-15 October 2026
One notable problem with this is that Speechify’s helper doesn’t currently work with browsers with built-in sidebar helpers like OpenAI’s Atlas, Perplexity’s Comet, and Dia. The startup isn’t too worried about this, as the extension is largely aimed at Chrome and its huge user base.
Speechify said it plans to gradually include both voice typing and a voice assistant in all of its desktop and mobile apps.
The startup also wants to develop agents that complete tasks on your behalf. The startup didn’t reveal its full roadmap, but gave an example: making calls to make an appointment or waiting on hold with a company’s customer support. Other companies like Truecaller and Cloacked have pursued similar goals.
