Already offered to a handful of users, dubbing using artificial intelligence has been extended by the platform.
Youtube is taking a giant step towards an advancement that is still debated: dubbing using artificial intelligence. So far tested alongside a handful of users, the program has been widely extended to “hundreds of thousands of channels”, indicates the platform.
These are “focused on knowledge and information”, but other sections should follow in the coming weeks or months. To automatically provide dubbing in another language such as French, German, Italian or even Spanish, Indonesian and Japanese, it will be necessary for the basic material to be in English.
If, on the other hand, the video is French – for example – the automatic dubbing will only be in English.
Planned improvements and uncertain results
For creators who can benefit from it, everything happens in the background as soon as a video is uploaded to the platform, and you can choose not to publish them. YouTube also assures that its tool is in the testing phase and that the AI voices should gain emotion and even “simulate the environmental atmosphere” during future developments. It must be said that currently, the result is rather summary.
YouTube also warns that, like subtitles, AI dubs can have errors.
The platform nevertheless risks attracting the wrath of actors specializing in dubbing, already up in arms against generative artificial intelligence. In France, the #TouchePasMaVF movement seeks to raise awareness among politicians and spectators in an attempt to legislate.
Interviewed by Tech&Co in July 2024, Brigitte Lecordier, cult voice of Son Goku from Dragon Ball, expressed her concern: “We have to ask ourselves what society we want for our children,” she said. “Do we want a society managed by robots, where in the evening, a robot will read them a bedtime story, or the voice of an actor who will tell beautiful things and move us.”
Major creators therefore prefer to use professional dubbing, such as Inoxtag, whose documentary on its ascent of Everest, Kaizen, benefited from dubbing in English and Spanish. It now has nearly 40 million views.
