Why is dictation so inconsistent? Why does it not learn frequently used words?

Working on a large dictation project, reading from a notebook into a Pages document. I am finding that dictation is very inconsistent in what it hears. Sometimes the word "quote" is enough to open a quotation with the quotation mark, sometimes it drops the word "quote" onto the page.


Capitalization is random as well. And it would be super helpful if it learned new words, either by hearing them said, or if the transcribed text were fed back into the system. What I say a work and it gets misheard, it would be great if the correction of it was learned. That may be more of a task for specialized dictation program.


I have also tried MacWhisper and it is slightly better at hearing what I say but it lacks the ability to insert punctuation and new lines/paragraphs. So the built-in dictation is good but not good enough. I dread going back through this and correcting all the misheard words.


MacBook Air 13″, macOS 15.5

Posted on Jul 8, 2025 2:04 PM

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11 replies

Jul 8, 2025 4:32 PM in response to pdb206

I would think it depends a lot on the voice, timbre, and pronunciation of the person dictating. A lot of people don't speak clearly, tend to mumble, mispronounce words, stutter, stammer, start, stop, run words together. In other words being a normal human being. AI isn't as smart as some seem to think it is. We humans can interpret speech at a much higher level than any software algorithm can, in my opinion.

Jul 9, 2025 5:53 AM in response to pdb206

Dictation was AI before AI became a thing. It interprets and learns what it wants and discards all else. Speak too slowly or pause and it will think you have completed a sentence.


I gave up on Apple dictation (even as a native English speaker) as I can type faster than I can waste productivity on dictation's aberrational results and associated corrections.

Jul 8, 2025 5:50 PM in response to lkrupp

For sure…we can interpolate words we don't hear distinctly because we know what the speaker said without really hearing it. But I find I can speak very. slowly. and. robotically. and it still doesn't consistently transcribe what I said. This is not on a phone (maybe I need to try that?) but on a laptop. Not sure I should expect better, given how powerful phones are today.


MacWhisper is marginally better but it can't do punctuation by voice, inserting commas, periods, quotation marks and new lines as called for. So there is a lot of editing to do afterwards with it.

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Why is dictation so inconsistent? Why does it not learn frequently used words?

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