Marketing ops · Production

Kapwing drives user adoption by building AI-first features with AssemblyAI

The problem

Kapwing's previous transcription API lacked accurate word-level timing and foreign language translation, limiting the subtitle and caption features they could offer to a global user base.

First attempt

Their previous speech API did not deliver accurate word-level timing or foreign language translation support, prompting a vendor switch.

Workflow diagram · grounded in source
1
User needs video subtitles
trigger
“People watch videos on mute now a lot. Someone sends me a video and if I'm supposed to watch them on the train without subtitles, I'm not going to watch it.”
2
AssemblyAI transcription with word timing
ai_action
“one of the things that we started to do to make our transcription editing more powerful was give people precise word timings”
3
Foreign language translation
ai_action
“our previous API didn't have accurate enough word timing or foreign language translations. And foreign languages are actually important for us because we get a lot of users from around the world”
4
Word-by-word captions and trimming
output
“that allows them to do things like trimming with the transcript and things like when you're actually trimming the video, you're tethering the subtitles to the video as opposed to a specific point in time. And this also allows us to do th…”
Reported outcome

Switching to AssemblyAI enabled Kapwing to offer precise word timings, word-by-word animations, and foreign language translations, with transcriptions and translations becoming a major driver of revenue.

Reported metrics
Transcription and translation impact on revenuemajor driver of our revenue
Transcription correlation with paying customerscorrelates very highly with our paying customers
Reported stack
AssemblyAI
Source
https://www.assemblyai.com/customers/kapwing-customer-story
Read source ↗

Frequently asked questions

What did this team achieve with this AI workflow?

Switching to AssemblyAI enabled Kapwing to offer precise word timings, word-by-word animations, and foreign language translations, with transcriptions and translations becoming a major driver of revenue.

What tools did this team use?

AssemblyAI.

What results were reported?

Transcription and translation impact on revenue: major driver of our revenue; Transcription correlation with paying customers: correlates very highly with our paying customers (source-reported, not independently verified).

What failed first in this deployment?

Their previous speech API did not deliver accurate word-level timing or foreign language translation support, prompting a vendor switch.

How is this marketing ops AI workflow structured?

User needs video subtitles → AssemblyAI transcription with word timing → Foreign language translation → Word-by-word captions and trimming.

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