YouTube has apparently begun rolling out a new AI-powered translation function for its content creators, which will automatically redub a video’s content into one of nine languages without changing the speaker’s tone.
According to a tweet sent by @levelsio, “YouTube will now auto dub videos in English, Spanish, Portuguese, German, French, Italian, Hindi, Indonesian and Japanese” or “will use AI to take the original voice but change the language.”
The new tool will be added to producers’ channels in the coming weeks, although it will initially only be available for newly created content, not current videos.
The auto-dubbing technology was first unveiled in September during the company’s “Made on YouTube” event. At the time, a YouTube spokesman stated that “in the coming months we’ll be expanding our AI-powered dubbing tool, formerly known as ‘Aloud,’ to hundreds of thousands of creators,” as well as adding new languages beyond English, Spanish, and Portuguese available for beta users. “Once creators have access, their videos will be automatically dubbed upon upload, with the ability to opt-out if they so choose,” a representative told me.
YouTube isn’t alone in its AI translation attempts. Spotify announced a similar feature in 2023, claiming it will provide “a more authentic listening experience that sounds more personal and natural than traditional dubbing.”
When it first launched, users could only choose between English and Spanish translations, but French and German were later added. Meta has also just released a “universal language translator” called SeamlessM4T, which can switch between over 100 different languages. Its capabilities also include text-to-voice and text-to-text translation.
These new translation AIs could let content creators of all sizes access hitherto unattainable international audiences. Of course, the technology has the potential to backfire because of its predisposition to hallucinate facts and answers. If it mistranslated your content into a language you don’t speak, it would be difficult to detect the error before viewer complaints flooded in.