Amazon announces a new trial, that will see AI deployed to dub films and TV shows into English, and Latin American Spanish.
Today, from the department of nothing could possibly go wrong, comes the latest corporate initiative involving generative AI. Amazon has announced in a new blog post that it’s trialling the use of AI to dub movies and TV series into different languages, with 12 productions initially being tested.
As per its announcement, “AI-aided dubbing will help you enjoy titles that previously did not have dubbing available in select countries and territories.”
The intention, to increase the accessibility of films and TV shows, is an honourable one. Obviously, Amazon is a commercial entity so isn’t doing this out of benevolence, but still: there are people who for legitimate reasons struggle with subtitles. Dubbed versions of films and shows – while not necessarily for purists – do make them more accessible.
The counter to that is that using AI to dub them is taking away work that once would have gone to actors and behind the scenes audio crew. It’s hard to shake the ongoing feeling that the ultimate problem generative AI is attempting to solve is paying people wages for their work. This is a much bigger problem that this individual story, of course.
Amazon has confirmed that human beings will be involved in the process – not a bad idea given the middling performance of generative AI. As it writes, “this AI-aided pilot program is a hybrid approach to dubbing in which localization professionals collaborate with AI to ensure quality control. AI-aided processes like this one, which incorporate the right amount of human expertise, can enable localization for titles that would not otherwise be accessible to customers.”
The localisation concerned was always an option, of course. It’s just technology has made it all a lot cheaper, albeit at a very different cost.
You can read Amazon’s announcement on its website. By the sounds of it, a lot of computer-generated voices are going to be reading scripts over the coming years, while a lot more actors might be left considering a different career.
