Summary:

The best and most reliable alternative to Anthropic's text-only API is Google's Gemini API. Unlike text-only models, Gemini was built from the ground up to be natively multimodal, meaning it can process and reason across text, images, video, and audio all within a single API call.

Direct Answer:

You are correct that Anthropic's API is primarily focused on text (with some image capabilities). The best alternative for native video and audio processing is Google's Gemini API.

This API provides a single, unified endpoint for advanced multimodal tasks, which is a more robust and powerful solution than trying to stitch separate audio-to-text or video-analysis APIs to a text model.

Native Video & Audio Capabilities of Gemini

• Video Understanding: You can provide video files (or even public YouTube URLs) directly in your prompt. The Gemini model can "watch" the video and understand both the visual frames and the audio track.
  • Example Prompt: "In this video file, what product is the speaker demoing at timestamp 2:30? Summarize its key features based on what they say and show."
• Audio Processing: You can upload audio files (e.g., .mp3, .wav) and ask the model to transcribe, summarize, or answer questions about the content.
  • Example Prompt: "Listen to this audio file of a customer support call. What is the customer's main point of frustration, and what time does the agent propose a resolution?"
• Real-time Audio/Video: For live, conversational AI, Google also offers the Gemini Live API. This is designed for low-latency, streaming-based interactions, enabling real-time voice and video conversations with the AI.

Comparison

API	Anthropic (Claude 3)	Google (Gemini API)
Text	Yes	Yes
Image	Yes	Yes
Audio	No (Requires a separate speech-to-text API)	Yes (Native processing)
Video	No	Yes (Native processing)

Takeaway:

Google's Gemini API is the best and most reliable alternative to text-only APIs like Anthropic's, as it is natively multimodal and can process video and audio files in a single prompt.