Speechify is making its biggest product pivot yet, transforming from a text-to-speech tool into a comprehensive voice AI platform. The company just launched voice typing and a conversational assistant in its Chrome extension, directly challenging OpenAI and Google's voice interfaces. This marks a strategic shift for the startup as voice AI becomes the new battleground in browser productivity.
Speechify just threw down the gauntlet in the voice AI wars. The company that built its reputation helping people listen to articles and documents is now betting everything on the other direction - letting you talk to the web instead of just hearing it read back. The startup's new Chrome extension features represent the most significant product evolution since its founding, adding voice typing and a conversational AI assistant that lives in your browser sidebar. In a market suddenly crowded with voice tools, Speechify is making a bold claim: voice should be first, not an afterthought. The timing isn't coincidental. Speech recognition quality has dramatically improved over the past year, triggering what industry insiders call the "voice AI gold rush." Everyone from OpenAI with ChatGPT's voice mode to Google with Gemini is racing to perfect conversational interfaces. But Speechify thinks they're doing it wrong. "We believe that chat will always be the default user experience in ChatGPT and Gemini when you open the apps," Rohan Pavuluri, the company's chief business officer, told TechCrunch. "Voice will always be secondary - and in many cases, an afterthought for ChatGPT and Gemini." The new voice typing feature works across web applications, automatically correcting errors and filtering out filler words like existing dictation tools. But early testing reveals some rough edges. The tool performs well on Google Docs and Gmail but struggles with platforms like WordPress, where triggering voice dictation proves inconsistent. Speechify acknowledges these limitations, saying they're "adding optimization for popular sites gradually." More concerning for Speechify's ambitions: accuracy lags behind established players like Wispr Flow, Willow, and Monologue. The company insists its model learns from usage and error rates will decrease over time - a classic startup promise that'll need quick validation as users compare options. The conversational assistant represents Speechify's bigger bet. Living in your browser sidebar, it answers questions about whatever website you're viewing: "What are the three key ideas?" or "Explain this in simpler terms." It's Copilot for the open web, but voice-native. There's already a technical hiccup that signals the complexity ahead. The assistant conflicts with browsers that have built-in sidebar AI tools like OpenAI's Atlas, Perplexity's Coment, and Dia. Speechify isn't worried, betting on Chrome's massive user base, but this compatibility issue hints at the coming browser wars as every platform adds native AI features. The startup's roadmap gets more ambitious from here. Speechify wants to build agents that complete tasks autonomously - making phone calls to schedule appointments or waiting on hold with customer service. They're not alone in this vision. and are pursuing similar automated calling features. But Speechify's text-to-speech heritage could prove advantageous here - they understand audio quality and natural speech patterns better than most AI startups. The company plans to roll these voice features across all desktop and mobile apps gradually, creating a unified voice-first experience. It's a massive undertaking that requires Speechify to essentially rebuild its entire product philosophy around input rather than output. For a company that found success in one specific niche, this expansion represents both enormous opportunity and existential risk.
