YouTube says it has expanded its AI-powered auto-dubbing to “hundreds of thousands of channels” in the YouTube Partner Program that are “focused on knowledge and information.” YouTube says it will bring the feature to “other types of content soon.”
What the dubs consist of depends on the language used in the original video. If it was in English to start, it’ll be translated into French, German, Hindi, Italian, Spanish, Indonesian, Japanese, and Portuguese. If the starting video was made in one of those languages, YouTube will only produce an English dub.
For channels that have it, AI-dubbed videos are created automatically when the original video is uploaded, but creators can opt to preview them before they’re published. YouTube also provides options to unpublish or delete dubs, according to a support document for the feature.
The dubs aren’t very natural-sounding now, but YouTube promises they’ll get better at emulating “tone, emotion, and even the ambiance of the surroundings” with later updates. Here’s an English dub example of a French video about making potatoes au gratin:
However, YouTube cautions that “this technology is still pretty new, and it won’t always be perfect.” The company says it’s “working hard to make it as accurate as possible, but there might be times when the translation isn’t quite right or the dubbed voice doesn’t accurately represent the original speaker.”
YouTube initially announced its tests of auto-dubbing with “hundreds” of creators in June 2023.
