Earwig, with the AI switched off

Not everyone wants AI anywhere near their interviews.

Maybe a contributor has asked you not to. Maybe the broadcaster has rules about it. Or maybe you just don't want a machine reading what someone told you on camera. All fair.

Until now, turning AI off in Earwig meant losing the transcript too. That's changed. In the latest version, you can switch the AI off and still get every word.

One tap, at the top of the menu

Open the menu and the first thing you'll see is a box that says AI is on. Tap it. It turns coral and says AI is off. That's the whole thing.

It's in Settings too, under Listening & AI, and the two always match. If you're new to Earwig, you'll see the same box when you set up.

What still works

Earwig types out every word as you film, the same as always. Speaker names, timecodes, all of it.

Your markers save as normal. Each one is named with the words that were said at that moment, so you can still see what every marker is.

When you wrap, you get your transcript, your markers, the PDF and your marker files for Premiere, Resolve and Avid. Open Earwig Sync and the shoot is there with your markers on it.

What switches off

Once your words are typed out, nothing reads them. So with AI off there are:

• no AI notes on your markers
• no shoot summary, and no list of things you might have missed
• no summary email
• no question ideas from your brief

The shoot is left out of AI search in the web app too.

It stays with you

A shoot recorded with AI off is kept the same way as a Private one. Nobody else can open it. There's no share link and no editor invite, and its markers are only emailed to you.

If your editor needs it, send them the marker files and the PDF yourself.

It counts from the moment you press record. Turn AI back on halfway through a shoot and that shoot still stays AI off.

How it's different from Private mode

Private mode keeps everything on your phone. Nothing from the shoot is sent to us. The words are typed out on the phone itself, so they're a little rougher, and there are no speaker names.

AI off is for when you want the full transcript in your account, with speaker names, but you don't want anything reading it. Your audio still comes to us to be typed out, like any other shoot. Nothing else happens to it.

Get it

Update Earwig from the App Store. AI is still on unless you turn it off. If you'd rather it was off, it's one tap.