Built by someone who needed it.

The story behind WortKai.

1. 01

   A tool I built for myself

   WortKai began while I was a student: writing my master’s thesis in digital transformation and working as an intern at a company that builds AI voice agents. My studies were all about making work more digital, simpler and faster. At work, I learned how voice-to-text and text-to-speech really work.

   I liked the idea behind dictation apps like Wispr Flow and wondered if I could build something like it myself. I was already using the OpenAI API for my projects, so I used it here too. I built my own little app, and it worked.

2. 02

   The weekend it became WortKai

   I live and work in Germany, and most of my colleagues are German. They’re happy to speak English with me, but I knew they’d feel more at home if I wrote to them in German.

   So one weekend I sat down and added the feature I wanted most: I speak in English, the language I think in, and WortKai sends it in German, the language they read in. It worked so well that the rest of the features followed.

3. 03

   People started asking for it

   My colleagues and people at university tried it and gave great feedback. That’s when I knew this was more than a personal tool, bought the domain and turned it into a real product: the app and this website.

4. 04

   Why “WortKai”

   Wort is German for “word”. KI is German for AI, and it’s pronounced almost like “Kai”. Words and AI, in one name: what you say, turned into text by AI.

5. 05

   What’s next

   I often have a thought, say it out loud, and then still have to open ChatGPT or another tool to polish it. I couldn’t find one tool that lets you speak, rewrite and translate in a single step, so that’s what WortKai is becoming. Next up: making it effortless to write posts for LinkedIn.

   Right now WortKai is in early access with people close to me, and the feedback is great. Very soon, it will be open to everyone.

“Speak in the language you think in. Send it in the language they read.”

Yash Pai