In today’s world, where most events are global and multilingual, ensuring that everyone can follow along is a must. Whether you’re hosting a global conference, managing a corporate town hall, or running a live-streamed webinar, close captions and subtitles are no longer something you can overlook. They are the key to making your message clear, inclusive, and impactful.
But live captions have come a long way from the days of manual transcriptions and delayed subtitles. Thanks to AI-powered technology, captions are faster, smarter, and more reliable than ever. And at Interprefy, we’re not just adapting to these changes—we’re leading the way.
Here’s how AI is reshaping live captions, and why it matters to event organisers, corporate leaders, and anyone serious about accessibility.
Not long ago, live captioning meant having a trained human behind the scenes, listening closely and typing fast. And while it worked well most of the time, it wasn’t without its challenges. A study that looked at over 17,000 human-made captions in the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada from 2018 to 2022, showed (using the NER model) that even the pros sometimes struggled to keep up — especially with rapid speech, strong accents, or technical terms. Accuracy was high (around 99%), but it came with slower delivery and the need for multiple language experts when events went multilingual.
Today, AI has transformed live captioning. Thanks to advancements in Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR), AI-powered captions are more accurate and efficient than ever. Recent studies indicate that modern ASR systems can achieve accuracy rates approaching those of human transcribers, with some AI models reaching up to 95% accuracy in controlled environments . These improvements stem from developments like end-to-end neural network models and expansive multilingual training datasets. As a result, AI-driven captioning has become faster, more scalable, and increasingly reliable across various languages and settings.
Want to know more about the accuracy of AI captions? Read our article: Understanding the accuracy of AI captions: A comprehensive guide
While competitors offer solid captioning services, Interprefy's AI-powered captions take it a step further. We’ve built a system that doesn’t just “listen and type”—it is trained to recognize and accurately render event-specific terminology.
Generic captions often fall short when it comes to handling technical terms or niche topics. That’s where Interprefy AI stands out. While our AI has always been tailored to meet the needs of each specific event, we’ve now taken it a step further with the introduction of our Custom Vocabulary feature.
This feature is designed to adapt to the specific language of your event. Whether you’re hosting a medical conference, a fintech webinar, or a tech summit, our AI can recognise industry-specific jargon, proper names, and complex concepts. Simply provide us with your key terminology, and our AI will ensure it’s captured accurately in real time — making your content clear, professional, and truly inclusive.
Unlike traditional captioning tools that focus on a single language, Interprefy’s AI captions are built for a global audience. Whether you’re hosting an event with participants from Tokyo, São Paulo, or Paris, our system can deliver real-time captions in multiple languages simultaneously. This isn’t just about basic translation — it’s about context-aware multilingual support that captures industry-specific terminology.
For international conferences, webinars, or hybrid events, this means you can engage diverse audiences without language gaps. With Interprefy, language inclusivity isn’t an extra — it’s built into the core of our technology.
Live events are dynamic — speakers may go off-script, switch topics unexpectedly, or speak with varying accents and speeds. That’s where Interprefy’s AI-powered captions prove their value. Our system is designed with real-time adaptability, meaning it can adjust quickly to changes in speech patterns and diverse accents.
While AI-powered captions are highly effective, they aren’t infallible. Factors like background noise, unclear pronunciation, rapid speech, and overlapping conversations can impact accuracy. However, Interprefy’s technology is built to handle these challenges by continuously processing and refining the spoken input, ensuring that captions remain as accurate and timely as possible during live events.
When it comes to live captioning, timing is everything. If captions appear too late, it can disrupt the flow of an event, making it hard for attendees to follow what’s being said. This delay, known as latency, refers to the time it takes for spoken words to be converted into on-screen text.
At Interprefy, we’ve optimised our AI-powered captions to achieve ultra-low latency, meaning captions appear almost instantly after the speaker has finished talking. By default, you’ll see captions appear within about 4 seconds of the speaker completing a sentence. For events that require even faster results, our "instant mode" can deliver captions in real time with automatic corrections happening on the fly.
This near-instant speed is especially important for panel discussions, live Q&A sessions, and interactive events, where audience engagement relies on captions being in sync with the conversation.
Live captions are crucial for people with hearing impairments. But their value goes way beyond accessibility.
Real Impact: After integrating Interprefy’s AI-powered captions at the Axians Tech Conference, thousands of attendees from 27 countries were able to engage more effectively in a fully immersive 3D virtual environment. The multilingual captions not only improved understanding but also fostered greater inclusivity, allowing participants to connect with the content in their preferred language. As a result, Axians saw a significant boost in audience interaction, with attendees reporting higher satisfaction and a stronger sense of connection across their global community.
Don’t let language gaps hold your events back. Interprefy’s AI-powered live captions make your content accessible, engaging, and truly global.