A messaging system, which hosts a backend service for an associated messaging client, includes a voice chat system that provides voice chat functionality that enables users to dictate their messages, while delivering the resulting message to the intended recipient as both the associated audio and text content. When a user at a sender client device begins dictating a voice message, the voice chat system starts converting the received audio stream into text and, also, starts communicating the audio content together with the generated text to the recipient client device. The recipient user can listen to the voice message and read the text generated from the audio in real time. It is also possible for the recipient user to consume the voice message in a textual form only, if the sound at the client device is undesirable.