In June 2023, YouTube announced that it was experimenting with an AI tool to help people enjoy videos in languages ​​they do not understand. Fast forward to now, that experiment has turned into an actual feature available to users. The new tool, called Automatic Dubbing, aims to make videos more accessible by translating spoken dialogue into different languages. This is a huge step towards helping creators connect with a global audience and break down language barriers. The technology behind this feature comes from Aloud, a dubbing service that started as a small experiment under Google’s Area 120 incubator. Target? Breaking down language barriers and making YouTube content easier for everyone to enjoy, no matter where they’re from or what language they speak.

YouTube recently introduced the feature in a blog post highlighting some examples. One video was dubbed from French to English, another was dubbed from Hindi to English, and the third video now supports nine different languages, including English (original), Hindi, Portuguese, Spanish, Japanese. , Italian, German, French and Indonesian. It’s exciting to see this feature becoming available to creators around the world, although YouTube has decided to only feature certain videos for now.

Now, here’s the thing to keep in mind – the dubbed audio doesn’t match the speaker’s lip movements (it’s not lip-sync), but for what it’s worth, it’s still pretty good. Even in fast-paced conversations, such as YouTube-referenced cooking videos, the dubbing goes surprisingly well. Currently, automatic dubbing is available to creators who are part of the YouTube Partner Program and create videos primarily focused on sharing knowledge or educational content. But YouTube says the feature will be expanded to other types of videos in the near future.

So, how does this work for the audience? It’s very easy! If a video is dubbed, you can find the “Audio Track” option by tapping on Settings (gear icon). If the video is available in multiple languages, you’ll see them listed there. Another way to check is by opening the video description. If you see a section that says “Auto-dubbed” under the “How this content was created” section, it means you can watch it in more than one language.

For creators, the process is pretty straightforward. The dubbing feature is automatically enabled for their videos. This means, as a creator, you can upload your content like you usually do, and YouTube’s AI will handle the rest. The AI ​​tool creates dubbed versions in multiple languages. For example, if the original language of your video is English, the tool will automatically dub it into French, German, Hindi, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, and Spanish. If your video is in one of those other languages, the tool will dub it into English. Creators can review AI-generated dubs in YouTube Studio. If they are not happy with how it turned out, they may choose to unpublish or remove some of the dubbed versions, or even all of them. According to YouTube, dubbed voices aim to match the tone and style of the original speaker. Although this is quite good, they admit that the technology is still not perfect. Therefore, there may still be some hiccups here and there.