Tether launches offline AI speech model for smart glasses and robots

Tether has released a 254 million parameter speech recognition model that can transcribe conversations directly on smartphones, smart glasses and humanoid robots without sending audio to cloud servers. Summary Tether has released TranscribePsy, a 254 million parameter AI model that processes speech locally on smartphones, smart glasses and humanoid robots without cloud access. The model transcribed 10 minutes of audio in 1.65 seconds on an iPhone 17 Pro Max and performed faster than several competing speech recognition systems in Tether’s tests. TranscribePsy supports 25 European languages on laptops and eight on phones, with dedicated versions optimized for Apple’s Neural Engine. The open source release is part of Tether’s QVAC AI project, which focuses on running AI applications directly on consumer devices while keeping user data private. According to an October 14 announcement from Tether AI Research, the open source model, called QVAC TranscribePsy, supports multilingual speech recognition and is designed to operate on devices with limited computing power. The company said the model can transcribe 10 minutes of audio in 1.65 seconds on an iPhone 17 Pro Max using Apple’s Core M...