Will AI Dubbing on YouTube Change How We Watch Videos?

After almost three years of restricted beta testing, YouTube is expanding access to its AI-enabled dubbing tool. “Hundreds of thousands of creators” are said to soon gain access to this technology, as announced on September 18, 2024.

Mentioned in the announcement as the YouTube “AI-powered dubbing tool formerly known as Aloud,” we know that a few creators were granted access to the feature as far back as 2022.

Considering the speed at which machine-dubbing tools have been introduced since about 2020, YouTube’s dubbing tool appeal at this late stage might be that the feature will be a part of YouTube Studio, where channel and video management is centralized.

Languages with large viewerships such as French, Hindi, Indonesian, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish will soon be joined by many more, according to the announcement. In fact, the Aloud site boasts of “Every video in every language for everyone,” and YouTube is also testing functionality that would mimic the creator’s tone and intonation in the dubbed versions.

We asked readers (as viewers) whether multi-language audio tracks would change their YouTube habits, and the majority (56.5%) said no. A little over a quarter (28.3%) of respondents are on the fence, and the rest (15.2%) are sure their habits will indeed change.

Talk to my Glasses, Please

Continuing with speech translation, as news channels were inundated with announcements on the subject by big tech in September 2024 (NVIDIA, Meta, OpenAI), many on the consumer lot focused on Meta’s developer conference update on the capabilities of Ray-Ban smart glasses, which have been around since 2021.

The glasses have open-ear speakers that, according to a press release, will soon allow users to translate speech in real time. Only a few languages were available at the time of the announcement, with the promise of more to be added soon. 

It is difficult to tell if the fact that Ray-Ban is an established brand will help increase the adoption of smart glasses in any way, but the price point might be. At under USD 300, the glasses are a bargain compared to the much pricier Google Glass Explorer. 

There are also many competitors in the low-price smart glasses market (e.g., RayNeo, XReal, OhO), but not all offer speech translation or speech anything.

Readers are largely uninterested (43.3%) in the Ray-Ban speech translation glasses. Over a third (35.1%) believe it to be another glasses fail, but a small group (13.5%) does find fascination in the gadget and the rest (8.1%) actually think it is “revolutionary.”

Advanced Voice Mode: Activated

Had enough of “speech that and the other”? Hopefully not, because going with the trend, OpenAI continues to make [sound] waves with ChatGPT Advanced Voice Mode. 

Since October 1, 2024, Advanced Voice has been available to most ChatGPT subscribers, “except for those in the European Union, Switzerland, Iceland, Norway, and Liechtenstein”. But the feature, which allows users to chat verbally with ChatGPT, is available to Enterprise and Education subscribers in the European Union. It is just that folks in some European countries cannot test the functionality for themselves at this time due to data privacy restrictions.

There is also a “Standard Voice” feature, which OpenAI says is “not natively multimodal like Advanced Voice.” Standard voice uses GPT-4o and GPT-4o mini. And advanced Voice comes in nine voice “personalities,” like “easygoing and versatile” and “bright and inquisitive.” Either standard or advanced use comes with daily limits.

We asked readers if they had tested Advanced Mode, and most (58.6%) said no. Two equal cohorts (20.7% each) said they had tried it already or wanted to but have no access yet.

Propio Restarting Big Deal M&A?

Propio Language Services acquired United Language Group (ULG) in September 2024. A major move in the language services industry, the mix of capabilities, client bases, and geographic presence can propel Propio, already a dominant player in the interpreting space, to a top-tier one-stop shop with what is now a more robust text translation offering.

Propio CEO, Marco Assis, is betting big on this merger, touting the synergy between the two companies and predicting a wave of growth and innovation. “I thought a combination made a lot of sense for quite some time, particularly given ULG’s translation offering, proprietary AI-based capabilities, and growing interpretation business,” Assis told Slator.

The CEO also expects that 2024 will be the largest year of growth in the company’s history, based both on organic growth and additional acquisitions. 

We asked readers their opinions on the Propio-ULG deal. Specifically, if it signals a restart for language industry M&A, and most (43.3%) do not think it is the case. A third (30.0%) think it probably does, and over a quarter (26.7%) believe it is indeed an M&A restart.