It's not even possible for me to verify the accuracy claims of this closed model with limited API access.
I really don't care about closed API models of anything that has a good/usable open source version. Whisper works well enough, I'm never going to follow up on this USM research or use it. The only reason to pay for the API access would be for some super niche language. And if Google is paywalling this only for the few customers who need it for use in terribly under-represented communities ... that's a kind of douchebaggery all its own.
The only reason people are paying for OpenAI's GPT-4 is because there's literally no usable open-source LLM. The instant a "good enough" one exists, OpenAI's revenues will drop by >95%.
Hopefully Google will at least use this in Google Home because it's still bad enough to notice.
I mean, some people--like myself--are already paying for Google's multi-language speech recognition API, and have been for years, so the idea that there is a new even-better model for it sounds cool to me? My primary annoyance is that this is Google, so of course they aren't going to put in even the minimal effort to just make this a new backend for their existing ridiculously-insane API I had to build a miserable slightly-custom http/2 stack to access :/.
Regardless, I don't want to use the API, but I'm working with public information anyway; and so, while I have considered moving to Whisper now that that's an option, it hasn't been a priority and it isn't clear to me that Whisper is good at random non-English languages anyway.
I really don't care about closed API models of anything that has a good/usable open source version. Whisper works well enough, I'm never going to follow up on this USM research or use it. The only reason to pay for the API access would be for some super niche language. And if Google is paywalling this only for the few customers who need it for use in terribly under-represented communities ... that's a kind of douchebaggery all its own.
The only reason people are paying for OpenAI's GPT-4 is because there's literally no usable open-source LLM. The instant a "good enough" one exists, OpenAI's revenues will drop by >95%.
Hopefully Google will at least use this in Google Home because it's still bad enough to notice.