Still, YouTube’s new push into automated dubbing is a serious challenge for existing dubbing companies, which are now forced to compete with a free competitor built into the platform. In the fall of 2020, the program was scrapped because of poor traction with users, and complaints of the tool being abused.Īn early demonstration of the Aloud system: viewers can switch to auto-generated audio tracks in Spanish, Portuguese, Hindi and Bahasa Indonesia in the video settings. A community subtitling program, which allowed users to jointly edit or correct captions, was launched in response to advocacy groups for the blind and visually impaired. YouTube has had mixed results with its translation product rollouts, with the platform’s auto-captioning feature particularly criticized for poor quality. “Underserved markets such as Indic languages a top priority for us,” Sasakthi Abeysinghe, Aloud’s co-founder and now principal engineer and lead of YouTube Dubbing, told Rest of World. In late 2022, it ran a select pilot in India that allowed health-care content creators to dub their videos into Hindi, Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu, and Bengali. The Aloud team has also set its sights on regional languages. Educational creators are some of the earliest channels selected, including biology channel Amoeba Sisters, and Kings and Generals which caters to history buffs. For now, Aloud’s pilot is mostly made up of creators already part of YouTube’s Partnership Program, which allows channels to monetize their uploads. As of last month, it has been officially folded into the company. Until recently, Aloud was a part of Google’s in-house incubator, called Area 120. “The uncontrolled advance of AIs could mean the loss of countless jobs in the sector” Though the on-screen graphics and thumbnails will still be set to only one language, creators no longer have to post entirely separate videos for each dub. In the lead up to the pilot announcement, YouTube also released a new product feature that allows viewers to select between multiple dubbing tracks on a single video, similar to the current option for subtitles. By offering Aloud for free, YouTube is setting up a new swath of creators to access dubs for the first time. Many smaller creators, however, are priced out of these services. These firms already regularly dub videos into Spanish, Russian, Japanese, and other languages. “Helping a creator expand beyond their primary language can help them reach new audiences.”ĭubbing firms, known as language service providers (LSPs), have been hired by some of YouTube’s most popular creators - including MrBeast, PewDiePie, and DudePerfect - to bring their content to millions more viewers. “Our long-term goal is to be able to dub between any two languages, and as part of that goal we will continue to pilot and learn from dubbing content in different regions,” Buddhika Kottahachchi, co-founder of Aloud and the recently appointed head of product for YouTube Dubbing, told Rest of World. “Our long-term goal is to be able to dub between any two languages” Hundreds of creators have already signed up to test the tool. The company has said more languages are coming - likely including Bahasa Indonesia and Hindi, which are already advertised on the Aloud website. The pilot currently includes the option to dub videos into English, Spanish, and Portuguese. The dub can take just minutes to generate. The tool first generates a transcription of a video’s audio, which a creator can edit before selecting their preferred language and style of synthetic voice. Now, YouTube is delivering on that promise with Aloud - a free tool that automatically dubs videos using synthetic voices, raising creators’ hopes and putting new pressure on dubbing firms that already cater to YouTubers.Īt the VidCon convention in late June, YouTube announced a pilot for Aloud. In an open letter earlier this year, Neal Mohan, the recently appointed head of YouTube, made a pledge to creators that better translation tools were coming.
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