AI-Powered Live Closed Captioning for Public Broadcasts
What it is for
- The system generates closed captions for live public broadcasts, enabling deaf and hard-of-hearing audiences to access City Council hearings and NYC World cable content.
NYC Automated Decision Systems Use Case Register — AppTek OmniCaption 300
- The system makes live public government proceedings — such as City Council hearings — accessible to the public in written caption form as they happen.
NYC Automated Decision Systems Use Case Register — AppTek OmniCaption 300
- Run by
- Mayor's Office
- Where
- No fixed location
- Kept
- Not stated by the NYC Office of Technology and Innovation.
- Shared with
- Accountable organization
What it is for
This system uses AI-based automatic speech recognition to generate closed captions in real time for live-broadcasted public events, including City Council hearings and content on the NYC World cable channel. It is operated by the Mayor's Office of Media and Entertainment using a vendor appliance from AppTek. The system processes spoken words from live broadcasts and produces written captions autonomously, with no human review of each caption before it appears on screen.
What it collects and what happens to it
Data taken in
- The input consists of live speech (voice audio) from individuals speaking during public hearings, meetings, and events broadcast on NYC World. Voices are identifiable as they come from named public officials and participants in live proceedings.
NYC Automated Decision Systems Use Case Register — AppTek OmniCaption 300
Processing
- The system employs AI-enabled automatic speech recognition (ASR) trained on broadcast news, sports, weather, and other programming to transcribe live spoken audio into closed captions.
NYC Automated Decision Systems Use Case Register — AppTek OmniCaption 300
What it does
- The appliance uses automatic speech recognition to convert live spoken audio from broadcasts into structured text output (closed captions) without human review of each caption.
NYC Automated Decision Systems Use Case Register — AppTek OmniCaption 300
Outputs
- The system produces closed captions — written text transcriptions of the spoken words from live broadcasts. Captions reflect the content of speech but are not directly linked to named individuals in the caption data itself.
NYC Automated Decision Systems Use Case Register — AppTek OmniCaption 300
Run by
- The Mayor's Office of Media and Entertainment deploys the AppTek OmniCaption 300 appliance to provide closed captioning of live-broadcasted public events and content on NYC World.
NYC Automated Decision Systems Use Case Register — AppTek OmniCaption 300
Built by
- AppTek is the technology vendor that supplies and supports the OmniCaption 300 closed captioning appliance used by the Mayor's Office of Media and Entertainment.
NYC Automated Decision Systems Use Case Register — AppTek OmniCaption 300
Kept for
Not stated by the NYC Office of Technology and Innovation.
Shared with
- The closed captions produced by the system are broadcast publicly as part of live television coverage on NYC World and at public hearings. The Mayor's Office of Media and Entertainment has operational access to the system and its outputs.
NYC Automated Decision Systems Use Case Register — AppTek OmniCaption 300
Stored
Not stated by the NYC Office of Technology and Innovation.
How to read the colours
Can it identify you?
- Anonymized data
- Data about people with the link to who is broken. Stripped of identifiers, blurred, aggregated, or noised so this system can’t reasonably tie a record back to an individual.
- Pseudonymous data
- Each person’s data is tied to a token (hash, ID, template) that lets this system recognise the same person across events, but the token itself doesn’t reveal a name. Reidentification is possible with extra information.
- Identifiable data
- The data either contains a direct identifier (name, address, account name, recognisable face or voice, plate number) or carries a token this system uses to look up legal identity during processing.
Who completes the loop?
- Human decides
- This mode suggests; a person decides what to do next. The AI is always advisory — a human is in the loop on every decision. Example: a triage tool ranks cases for a clinician who chooses which to see first.
- Human executes
- This mode decides; a person carries out the result. Example: an optimizer plans the day’s trash-collection routes, and drivers run them.
- Autonomous
- This mode decides and acts on its own. No person reviews each decision or carries out the resulting action.
Definitions from the DTPR standard. Amber is about your data, violet about who decides. The fuller the shape and the deeper the colour, the more identifying the data or the less a person is involved.
- AI registerNYC Automated Decision Systems Use Case Register — AppTek OmniCaption 300Mayor's Office of Media and Entertainment, reported 2025, first used November 2022.
- AI registerNYC Automated Decision Systems Use Case Register — AppTek OmniCaption 300
- AI registerNYC Automated Decision Systems Use Case Register — AppTek OmniCaption 300
- AI registerNYC Automated Decision Systems Use Case Register — AppTek OmniCaption 300
- AI registerNYC Automated Decision Systems Use Case Register — AppTek OmniCaption 300
- AI registerNYC Automated Decision Systems Use Case Register — AppTek OmniCaption 300
- AI registerNYC Automated Decision Systems Use Case Register — AppTek OmniCaption 300
- AI registerNYC Automated Decision Systems Use Case Register — AppTek OmniCaption 300
- AI registerNYC Automated Decision Systems Use Case Register — AppTek OmniCaption 300
- AI registerNYC Automated Decision Systems Use Case Register — AppTek OmniCaption 300
- AI registerNYC Automated Decision Systems Use Case Register — AppTek OmniCaption 300
- AI registerNYC Automated Decision Systems Use Case Register — AppTek OmniCaption 300
- AI registerNYC Automated Decision Systems Use Case Register — AppTek OmniCaption 300
- Register entryPublished by the NYC Office of Technology and Innovation. Reference 23c7f983. This disclosure was drafted with AI assistance.Schema: ai@2026-05-06-beta
What you can do
Ask about this system
Questions go to the NYC Office of Technology and Innovation, not the vendor.
Your rights
- Right to Be Informed of AI UseMembers of the public who speak at live-broadcast events should be aware that an AI-powered automatic speech recognition system is transcribing their spoken words in real time to generate closed captions for broadcast audiences.
- Right to Algorithmic TransparencyThe public can learn that this system uses AI automatic speech recognition trained on broadcast news, sports, weather, and other programming to produce captions. Further technical details are available from AppTek at https://www.apptek.ai/.
Risks and safeguards
- Reputational harmAutomatic speech recognition systems can produce inaccurate transcriptions ("hallucinations" or errors), which could misrepresent what a speaker said in a public proceeding, potentially harming their reputation. The system is described as fully autonomous with no explicit human review step before captions are broadcast. Mitigation details are not specified in the register; however, AppTek provides vendor support for the appliance, and the system was trained on broadcast content to improve accuracy.