YouTube’s AI-powered auto dubbing tool has finally arrived

A year-and-a-half after YouTube first announced it, the platform’s AI dubbing service has arrived. The company shared the news alongside some example videos equipped with auto dubbing (which we’ll get into in a bit). The feature is available to “hundreds of thousands of” informational or educational YouTube Partner Program channels, with broader rollout planned soon.

Creators can have their English language video dubbed in French, German, Hindi, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese or Spanish. A video is any of those languages can only have an English dubbing. The process should be automatic, and creators can preview them before a video goes live. Dubbed videos are available to watch in the YouTube Studio’s “languages” section, and come with an auto-dubbed label.

The company shared three example videos with dubbing in its announcement, two dubbed in English from French and Hindi, respectively, and one in English with a range of dubbing options to try. The English translations sound very AI-generated and stilted to me, though seemingly accurate, while my colleague Steve Dent tried the French dubbing and had a similar experience.

However, YouTube only shared examples of the tool dubbing over narration rather than  people talking. I dug for a little while to find an example of a visible conversation with dubbing but came up short — perhaps because AI dubbing may struggle with faster speech or crosstalk. YouTube preface that the “technology is new” and “won’t be perfect.”