{"id":576,"date":"2026-05-23T10:35:41","date_gmt":"2026-05-23T10:35:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/americanhomejournals.com\/?p=576"},"modified":"2026-05-23T10:35:41","modified_gmt":"2026-05-23T10:35:41","slug":"i-tried-to-whisper-like-an-ai-coder-it-nearly-ruined-my-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/americanhomejournals.com\/?p=576","title":{"rendered":"I tried to whisper like an AI coder. It nearly ruined my life."},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

I like my job. I would not<\/em> like to be fired from my job for typing inappropriate things into Slack for all my coworkers to see. Or, at least, if that’s how I’m going to go out \u2014 and I’ll be honest, I feel like I’m always one accidental copy\/paste from that, anyway \u2014 I’d like it to be something I wrote myself.<\/p>\n

Read more OpenAI will pay up to $445,000 for a researcher who can prepare for a world where AI trains itself<\/a><\/p>\n

Not AI transcribing reality show clips with vulgar language in messages to my bosses.<\/p>\n

My job, which I do not<\/em> want to be fired from, sometimes involves testing new technologies, apps, or gadgets and reporting on my experiences with them. That’s a pretty fun job \u2014 one that I would like to keep and, again, not be fired from for writing “slam pig<\/em>” in Slack. (It’s an insult \u2014 possibly regional in origin \u2014 used recently on “The Real Housewives of Rhode Island.”)<\/p>\n

Which is how I found myself in a very compromising position, where my desire to test a new AI tool led me to send a giant block of highly inappropriate text to my coworkers and bosses.<\/p>\n

My experience using the voice-to-text app AI coders are obsessed with<\/h2>\n

I wanted to test out an AI tool called Wispr Flow, which has become popular among people who use AI\u00a0heavily for coding and other technical work at work, among other things.<\/p>\n

The preferred method, from what I’ve read, is to use a special gooseneck microphone to talk directly into, which Wispr Flow transcribes into nicely formatted text. It’s essentially like speech-to-text on your phone, but better \u2014 it cleans up the speech, adjusts the tone to casual or more formal, and adds punctuation and paragraph breaks.<\/p>\n

I’m always interested in new ways people are working, especially around something that seems as essential and basic as “typing into a computer.” If people are indeed moving away from the keyboard and mummuring into little microphones all day in the office, well, that’s fascinating!<\/p>\n

So I downloaded the app to my computer and signed up for a free account.<\/p>\n

During the setup process, I chose to use my built-in laptop mic and to activate dictation by pressing a certain key on my keyboard.<\/p>\n

I was ready to go. I tested things out a bit with my coworkers in Slack. I’m usually a pretty clumsy typist, and my casual Slack messages are usually laden with typos. (I like to insist this is a sign of my affection and care for my colleagues that I am not outsourcing my writing to AI.) But when I used Wispr, suddenly I had perfect writing. Like so:<\/p>\n

Great! Fun! I tried this out on a Friday morning and sort of forgot about it, planning to test it out more the following week.<\/p>\n

Well, that’s when things got weird. And bad.<\/p>\n

A few days after installing Wispr Flow, I went to start writing an article directly into Business Insider’s content-management system \u2014 the software that publishes what you’re reading now, directly onto the internet.<\/p>\n

As I typed a few words and hit Enter, something unexpected happened. A large wall of text appeared \u2014 far more than what I had just typed.<\/p>\n

Wispr Flow transcribed a tiff with my husband<\/h2>\n

I looked over it, and my life flashed before my eyes. The paragraphs of text were nothing I had meant to write \u2014 it was a transcription of the bickering between my husband and me over who was going to pick up the car from the repair shop.<\/p>\n

Apparently, I had errantly hit the button to start recording just before walking into the kitchen and picking a petty squabble. All while the cursor was sitting, blinking and ready to accept my prose in Business Insider’s CMS.<\/p>\n

(On another note, if you ever want to see whether you were being unkind in an argument, a transcription of what you said is a good way to find out. So, thanks for that harsh self-realization, Wispr Flow.)<\/p>\n

I immediately deleted the accidental transcription because \u2014 GOOD LORD \u2014 I did not want this in the text field where we publish articles, or for other coworkers to see.<\/p>\n

Read more There\u2019s a new type of VC in Silicon Valley: the creator-investor<\/a><\/p>\n

I was now aware that it was possible to accidentally hit the key to start transcribing without realizing it. But I soldiered on with my workday.<\/p>\n

\n
\n

The #SummerHouse Reunion trailer is here! pic.twitter.com\/572ZPkfgRt<\/p>\n

\u2014 Queens of Bravo (@queensofbravo) May 19, 2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

Which is how, just a few hours later, I did something even worse. I had just watched a video clip of the preview for the highly anticipated “Summer House” reunion on Bravo, where the fallout from a huge scandal unfolds.<\/p>\n

Wispr had also been listening while I watched this clip, and when I hit “Enter” on a Slack message, it pasted and sent the full transcription of the clip<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Even worse, it included another Bravo-related video I had watched just moments before, where one of the cast members of “The Real Housewives of Rhode Island” gave an interview explaining the meaning behind the colorful insult “slam pig” (which Wispr Flow transcribed as “slam pick”).<\/p>\n

Look, I think I can muster up an argument about how watching Bravo clips is work-related \u2014 staying on top of cultural news or something \u2014 but sending the transcription to 26 of my coworkers, including my bosses, is, uh, well \u2026<\/p>\n

Not ideal. Just take a look at the Slack:<\/p>\n

After this, I turned off Wispr. The chances of me doing something actually life-ruining with this were getting way<\/em> too high.<\/p>\n

So I called Tanay Kothari, CEO of Wispr Flow, and made him answer for nearly ruining my life.<\/p>\n

“This literally sounds like the ‘Final Destination’ movie, if it was about Wispr Flow,” he joked. “This is the kind of stuff that would happen.”<\/p>\n

It turns out that my accidental recordings weren’t something most people have experienced, Kothari said. He’d never heard of anyone messing up as badly as I had.<\/p>\n

He searched Wispr’s customer support tickets and found only three other instances where someone had done what I’d done \u2014 all of them related to switching the default recording key. (Wispr is planning to work on a fix for this, he said.)<\/p>\n

Why I’ll leave AI voice-to-text to the coders<\/h2>\n

Here’s where I stand with Wispr now: I wanted to test whether I could learn to adjust to doing more of my writing tasks \u2014 like emails, Slack messages, or even articles \u2014 via voice transcription instead of typing.<\/p>\n

But I never got more than a few days and two highly embarrassing incidents into it before I had to pull the plug on the experiment for my own self-preservation.<\/p>\n

Could it be that I might actually enjoy talking instead of typing? Maybe? My guess is that it varies a lot based on the type of writing task. For writing an article like this, I feel like typing works better \u2014 I don’t write exactly like I’d speak, and I need to be thinking it through while I write. (Coders might feel differently.)<\/p>\n

However, I’m far too burned on Wispr or any other voice-to-text AI products for the time being to try any others out. I don’t want to get fired or accidentally email or tweet about the rash on my [redacted<\/em>].<\/p>\n

Read more \u2018I got drafted\u2019: Inside Meta\u2019s push to move 7,000 staff into its AI task force<\/a><\/p>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A voice-to-text transcription app popular with AI engineers ended up sending lewd messages to my bosses. This hot mic is going to get me canned!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":575,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-576","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tech"],"yoast_head":"\nI tried to whisper like an AI coder. It nearly ruined my life. - American home journals<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/americanhomejournals.com\/?p=576\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"I tried to whisper like an AI coder. 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