You may have sometimes come across a video on YouTube that’s in a different language and with no closed captions, making understanding the content near impossible. And no content creator has the resources needed to prepare subtitles for every language out there for everyone in the world. To that end, Google is adding AI-powered dubbing to the video hosting platform, powered by Aloud.

According to The Verge, the announcement was initially made during VidCon. The team at Aloud itself came about via the internet search giant’s Area 120 in-house incubator, so the company roping them in to do this makes sense.

As it exists currently, Aloud first transcribes videos, allowing YouTubers to edit the transcription as needed. Once that’s done, the service translates and dubs the video using AI. Content creators then decide if they are happy with the result before uploading it. Applicable languages for now are still pretty limited with the list consisting of Indonesian, Hindi, two flavours of Portuguese, and two versions of Spanish, according to the Aloud website.

Further down the line, the report notes that YouTube is also “working to make translated audio tracks sound like the creator’s voice, with more expression, and lip sync”. These are planned for 2024, so it’s not something you can expect to see anytime soon.

Despite the limited languages, this AI dubbing tool can only be a good thing. Though it’s unclear if YouTube is doing this for the platform as a whole, or if it will retain the existing model that sees individual content creators request access to the tool from Aloud directly. All that being said, one can hope that the AI is smart enough to avoid the issue of overlocalisation that is the plague of both video games and online video series.

(Source: The Verge, Aloud)

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