Why AI Transcription Collapses When You Need It Most

AI transcription tools like Whisper achieve near-human accuracy in controlled labs but fail catastrophically in realistic professional environments—hallucinating text, misattributing speakers, and dropping accuracy below 50% in noisy conditions. This exposes a critical gap between vendor marketing and actual performance for real-world use cases like interviews, focus groups, and remote meetings. Practitioners need to understand these predictable failure modes to assess whether AI transcription can actually solve their business problems.