Searching interview transcripts for journalists

Investigative journalism is built on transcripts and documents. The story is in there — the question is whether you can find the right thread before deadline.

The problem

Twenty interviews × 60 minutes × imperfect transcripts is a search nightmare. Ctrl-F is keyword-bound; meaning gets lost. Generic AI summarizers risk inventing speakers and quotes — the cardinal sin in journalism. You need a tool that only surfaces what your sources actually said.

How SeekFiles AI helps

• Speaker-aware retrieval — quotes stay attached to the right source.
• Cited only from the transcripts you uploaded — no invented quotes.
• Hybrid retrieval — finds the right exchange even when the question's phrasing differs.
• Multilingual — transcripts across languages treated as one corpus.

A workflow

1. Build a per-story assistant. Upload all transcripts and document evidence.
2. Ask the questions you'd ask a colleague: "who mentioned the procurement scandal? what did they say?"
3. Verify the cited transcript before publishing. Always.
4. Cross-source: "do any sources contradict each other on the timeline of events?" — surfaces tension worth investigating.

What to upload

• Interview transcripts (Otter, Rev, Descript exports)
• Court records / FOIA documents
• Government PDFs / public records
• Press releases
• Your own reporting notes

The story is built from what your sources said. SeekFiles AI is just a much better way to remember what they said — with the receipts.