YouTube expands AI-powered automatic dubbing feature

YouTube has announced a major expansion of its artificial intelligence-based automatic dubbing feature. The technology is now available for “hundreds of thousands of channels” in the YouTube Partner Program that produce educational and informational content. The company plans to roll out the feature to other types of content in the near future.

How Automatic Dubbing Works

The technology allows you to automatically add dubbing in other languages to your video. If the original video was recorded in English, the dubbing is created in French, German, Hindi, Italian, Spanish, Indonesian, Japanese, and Portuguese. If the video was recorded in one of these languages, it will be dubbed into English.

For channels that have this feature available, dubbing is created automatically when the video is uploaded. However, creators can preview the dubbing before posting, and remove or hide it if they’re not happy with the result.

Any channel that has this feature will automatically create the dubbing when the video is uploaded.

Technology Enhancements

In its current state, dubbing doesn’t sound entirely natural, but YouTube promises to improve the technology so it can better convey tone, emotion and ambience. However, the company warns that the technology is still in the early stages of development, and there may be errors in translations or the dubbing may not match the speaker’s original voice.

A sample English dubbing for a French video about making gratin potatoes demonstrates the technology’s current potential.

An example of English dubbing for a French video about making gratin potatoes demonstrates the technology’s current potential.

Implementation History

Testing of automatic dubbing began with “hundreds” of content creators in June 2023. Now the feature is becoming available to many more channels, and YouTube is actively working to improve it.

The feature is now available to many more channels, and YouTube is actively working to improve it.