You told us: Most of you don't use Live Caption, but that's not the whole story

Live Caption has been around for a while now, being one of the more innovative uses of machine learning yet. This feature brings captions to content with audio, even if they don’t have subtitles to begin with.

The feature debuted on Google’s Pixel line but has since come to Samsung phones and several other devices. We posted a poll last week to find out just how many readers use Live Caption, and the results are finally in.

Do you use Live Caption on your smartphone?

Results

The poll accrued just over 1,200 votes, and it turned out that ~56% of respondents say they simply don’t use Live Caption on their smartphones.

Meanwhile, those who said they use Live Caption “sometimes” accounted for almost 31% of the vote. Comments point to occasional uses when out in public or when around other people, among other scenarios.

Roughly 6.8% of polled readers say they would use the feature if their phone had it. Finally, 6.3% of respondents say they use it all the time. In other words, almost 45% of respondents say they either use Live Caption in some capacity or would use it if their phone actually had it.

Comments

• Lex1020: I use it when I want to watch a video and know what’s being said but I’m out in public and don’t want to turn sound on.
• Painfully_Candid: I don’t require any accessibility features, so, no. I just need a digital assistant that is actually USEFUL.
• Justin Martin: I tried it once with a movie in Spanish. After trying for 10 minutes, I got to translate a few random words that didn’t make sense. Not useable at all.
• Leif Shantz: Sometimes when watching something without captions enabled.
• fearlessferret: Where is the “my phone doesn’t have it and I’m not interested” option?
• Jordi Mas: I just use it sometimes in Instagram when I watch an english video that has some parts I don’t understand, and it’s useful. But it takes like 5 seconds to start recognizing audio. It should improve.
• JK: While I think it’s useful, I don’t really need it because a phone is not my primary media consumption device.