Is Microsoft MAI-Transcribe-1.5 Down?

MAI-TRANSCRIBE-2 SUPERSEDES THIS MODEL -- AND THE PRICE IS THE HEADLINE, NOT THE ACCURACY (2026-09-03, vendor-primary): Microsoft launched **MAI-Transcribe-2**, calling it 'not only our most capable transcription model yet, but the most capable and efficient amongst our competitors'. **THE NUMBER THAT MATTERS: $0.10 per hour of audio**, which Microsoft calls 'the best price on the market'. **NEW CAPABILITIES OVER 1.5:** **diarization** (speaker separation), **configurable transcription styles**, and **word-level timestamps** -- the diarization addition is the significant one, because its absence is what pushed transcription buyers toward competitors regardless of raw WER. **ACCURACY, VENDOR-PUBLISHED:** ranks **first on the FLEURS benchmark across 60 languages with an average Word-Error-Rate of 5.2%**, defines the Pareto frontier for accuracy and latency on **Artificial Analysis**, and ranks **second on the Artificial Analysis WER leaderboard**. Microsoft names the models it says it beats: **Gemini 3.5 Transcribe, GPT-Transcribe, Whisper V3-Large and ScribeV2**. **READ THE TWO WER FIGURES CAREFULLY BEFORE COMPARING THEM TO THIS PAGE'S 1.5 NUMBERS -- THEY ARE DIFFERENT BENCHMARKS.** The 5.2% is a **60-language FLEURS average**; the 2.4% recorded on this page for MAI-Transcribe-1.5 is an **Artificial Analysis** figure. A higher headline number across sixty languages is not a regression against a narrower English-weighted benchmark, and Microsoft claims a rank improvement on Artificial Analysis (No. 3 for 1.5, No. 2 for 2) rather than a decline. **Language coverage also expands: 43 languages on 1.5, 60 evaluated on 2.** **STATUS OF THIS PAGE'S MODEL:** Microsoft's own model index now lists MAI-Transcribe-2 as the current transcription model; **no retirement date has been published for MAI-Transcribe-1.5**, so this page is not marking it deprecated -- but new deployments should be evaluated against 2, and the 1.5 integrations into Copilot, Teams, GitHub and Dynamics 365 Contact Center should be expected to migrate.

VERSION BUMP (2026-06-02, Microsoft Build): MAI-Transcribe-1.5 launched in the 'seven new MAI models' wave. Vendor-published changes vs 1.0: language coverage expanded from 25 to 43; speed improved to under 15 seconds per hour of audio (from 53s); new keyword-biasing feature delivers a ~30% WER reduction on the FLEURS multilingual benchmark by applying domain terminology intelligently (context-aware, not blind keyword forcing). Microsoft claims 'best-in-class Word Error Rate across 43 languages' and #3 on the Artificial Analysis leaderboard at 2.4% WER, describing it as 'the fastest, most efficient and most cost-effective transcription model of any hyperscaler.' Now being integrated into Copilot, Teams, GitHub, and Dynamics 365 Contact Center; available through Foundry. Per-hour pricing not disclosed at launch.

Public preview in US only for MAI Playground. Foundry API works globally but you need an Azure subscription to evaluate

Competitor positioning on the site: MAI-Transcribe-1 is a backend model, not a meeting-transcription product. Do not position it as an Otter.ai competitor -- it competes with Whisper and would typically be adopted BY meeting apps, not replace them