Speech AI platform
How to use
AssemblyAI.
Transcribing recorded or live speech and extracting structured insights such as speakers, chapters, entities, topics, sentiment, and summaries.
AssemblyAI is a speech-to-text, streaming transcription, and speech understanding API platform. Transcribing recorded or live speech and extracting structured insights such as speakers, chapters, entities, topics, sentiment, and summaries. This guide covers the whole path in one place: official access, a first session that produces something reviewable, the checks that make output trustworthy, and the permissions worth limiting before you connect real work.
AI should make the work easier to inspect. If the workflow removes the source, the owner, or the review step, redesign the workflow.
Access & setup
Find, install, and sign in to AssemblyAI
Get into the official AssemblyAI experience with the right account and a setup you understand.
- 01
Start at https://www.assemblyai.com/ and confirm the domain before entering account or payment information.
- 02
Availability: AssemblyAI is accessed through its dashboard, REST and streaming APIs, official SDKs, and integrations rather than a required desktop application.
- 03
An AssemblyAI project and API key, authorized audio, a secure backend environment, and network access to the appropriate regional endpoint.
- 04
Sign in with the account you intend to keep using, then review plan, data, notification, and permission settings.
- 05
Run one low-risk test task before connecting sensitive files, repositories, or workspace data.
- Use official download pages.
- Review permissions during setup.
- Keep installers and applications updated.
First session
Your first useful AssemblyAI session
Learn the interaction loop using a small task with a clear outcome.
- 01
Create a development project and a project-specific API key kept in a server-side secret.
- 02
Choose a short, consented recording with a known reference transcript and document its language and speakers.
- 03
Submit it with an explicit speech model and only the features needed, then handle the asynchronous job to completion.
- 04
Compare names, numbers, speaker labels, timestamps, and omissions against the audio before retaining or sharing the result.
- State the outcome before the background.
- Provide the real source material.
- Review the result before expanding the task.
Quality control
Check the quality of AssemblyAI output
Turn a promising generation into an asset you can legally and safely ship.
- 01
Restate the brief, the deliverable format, and where the asset will appear before judging any output.
- 02
Inspect at full resolution: generated media hides its errors at thumbnail size.
- 03
Check the details these systems reliably get wrong — hands, text, logos, reflections, symmetry, and edge artefacts.
- 04
Confirm the licence and commercial-use terms for your plan, and check the output does not reproduce a recognisable style, mark, or likeness you have no right to use.
- 05
Review for accessibility and delivery: alt text, contrast, colour profile, file size, and the exact export format.
- Inspect at full resolution before approving anything.
- Confirm commercial-use rights before an asset reaches a client.
- Keep the prompt and settings with the asset so it can be reproduced.
Privacy & permissions
Use AssemblyAI safely
Use the platform without surrendering rights, likenesses, or client material you do not control.
- 01
Confirm you hold the rights to every reference image, voice, or clip before uploading it.
- 02
Check whether your plan trains on submitted content, and opt out before uploading client work.
- 03
Never upload a real person's likeness or voice without their explicit, documented consent.
- 04
Review the output for marks, styles, or likenesses you have no licence to reproduce.
- 05
Label synthetic media where your client, platform, or jurisdiction requires disclosure.
- Audio can contain biometric, personal, confidential, copyrighted, or legally protected information. Confirm consent and purpose, isolate projects and keys, choose regional endpoints deliberately, minimize retention, handle partial and failed jobs safely, review transcription errors against audio, and monitor duration-based cost, concurrency, and rate limits.
- Follow your organisation's approved-use policy.
- Never treat fluent output as authorization to act.
Core workflows
Step-by-step ways to use AssemblyAI for the work it does best.
Each workflow is a separate guide with its own steps and review checkpoints.
Turn authorized recordings into time-aligned text while controlling language, speakers, storage, retries, and human correction.
↗ 02 WorkflowOperate a reliable streaming speech workflow with AssemblyAITranscribe live audio with correct session configuration, turn handling, backpressure, and failure recovery.
↗Official references
Check the current product documentation.
Features, plan limits, availability, and data controls change. These official pages are the starting points used for this guide.