Thanks to technology, speaking different languages is no longer a problem when communicating over the Internet. If you want to convey a message through YouTube and be understood in other parts of the world, the platform has launched an automatic dubbing function. Thus, something you say in Spanish can be understood by a Chinese or English person without problems.
Content creators will be able to generate translated audio tracks for the videos they publish on YouTube. This automatic dubbing tool is powered by artificial intelligence-based technology. The company introduced this functionality last year, but until now only a limited group of YouTubers had been able to test it. The platform is currently rolling it out to hundreds of thousands more channels.
In particular, YouTube is betting on launching it first to channels that focus on informative and educational content, such as videos that teach cooking or sewing. However, the automatic dubbing function will gradually reach other types of profiles, covering publications of all tastes and interests.
Dubbing in up to nine languages
According to its developers, YouTube will be able to automatically detect the language spoken in a video. This way, you can create dubbed versions in other languages instantly and make it easier to spread a message. Specifically, the AI tool works in nine languages:
- English
- French
- German
- Hindi
- Indonesian
- Italian
- Japanese
- Portuguese
- Spanish
Therefore, in Spain, we can enjoy videos recorded by a German, Japanese or American without having to know the language in question, and vice versa. This is especially useful when we want to stay informed about international news or watch the latest viral video that they can’t stop talking about on social media and understand it from beginning to end.
YouTube’s automatic dubbing uses Gemini
Gemini is the name Google uses to talk about its multimodal and generative intelligence conversational bot. Many of the company’s services already have this AI in new functions and it has served to improve the user experience. Among the endless intelligent features that Google has been implementing on its platforms over the last few years, there is now automatic YouTube dubbing.
In this case, the brand has used Gemini’s capabilities to replicate human speech in its automatic YouTube dubbing. However, AI dubbed videos will not be as good as those made by voice actors and actresses and it is something that content creators will have to take into account. It is one thing to use the function so that the message reaches more people and quite another for viewers in other countries to obtain a quality dubbing.
In fact, YouTube warns that the tool still does not work perfectly, since it is in its early stages of development:
“We are working hard to make it as accurate as possible, but there may be times when the translation is not entirely correct or the dubbed voice does not accurately represent the original speaker. “We really appreciate your patience and feedback as we continue to improve.”
Over time, Google hopes to optimize this automatic dubbing tool. However, voice actors are still necessary for certain content if we want the results to be good. The concern in this regard about whether or not they will take away the work of professionals is seen more in the long term, since more and more work is being done on dubbing made with more realistic AI. Without going any further, the YouTube team is preparing an upcoming update that will have a feature called “Expressive Speech.” This will be designed to imitate the tone and emotions of the YouTuber and recreate the environment in which the video is recorded.
