YouTube integrates artificial dubbing tool Aloud into video platform
YouTube wants to make it easier for creators to make videos available to speakers of other languages, and will therefore integrate the dubbing tool Aloud into its video platform. Aloud is a combined transcription, translation and speech synthesis tool.
Ancient is a Google start-up whose team will be transferred to YouTube, the latter says to The Verge. The Aloud team will integrate the tool within YouTube, making the tool more widely available. The tool is currently being tested with ‘hundreds’ of creators and three languages are available: English, Spanish and Portuguese.
Later, the company wants to add more languages and make the tool more widely available. In addition, the company wants to improve the tool to make the dubbing sound more like the original voice and lip sync. The company expects to be able to take steps in this regard next year.
Ancient allows users to upload a video with subtitles, which the tool can then translate. If there are no subtitles, the tool can also transcribe the video. The creator can then check that transcribed tool again. Later, Aloud translates the text and the tool syncs it, after which the creator can upload the dubbed video. Aloud says this is possible through steps in audio separation, machine translation and speech synthesis. This allows creators to make a video available to a larger audience more quickly and easily, according to Aloud.
An example of an Aloud dubbed video. In the video’s settings, users can choose a different audio track, in this case Spanish.