M+E Daily

Artificial intelligence (AI) can enhance your organisations global presence by optimising localisation costs and scaling your business, Yoram Chertok, chief strategic planning officer at Dubformer, said 29 February during the ITS Localisation event in London.

During the Tech Spotlight session “Unleashing AI for Content Localisation in the Media & Entertainment World – A Real Customer Showcase, Chertok said: “You’re going to hate me, I’m afraid. There’s a big risk talking about AI localisation for a room full of professionals because everything I’m going to say today might be outdated tomorrow.”

Also, despite the name of the session, “unleashing AI for content localisation … [is] a false statement because AI has actually been out there for a while, and it [was already] unleashed,” he told attendees.

“I’m a total layman in this field,” he conceded. But he said: “I come from media, and I understand quite well what the media needs, what localisation is needing. Therefore, and this is why I love this thing of AI: Because it’s fascinating. And it’s new and it has so many abilities, and our company actually is full of tech geniuses, unlike myself.”

Dubformer is providing localisation services using AI technologies and solutions, he went on to say.

“So actually it’s not unleashing AI but [figuring out] how to put AI on a leash,” he said. “AI needs to be on a leash. Imagine a dog that you’re walking that you take into the park and you are unleashing the dog. So it can be great fun for everyone. But it also might end with a big pile of shit.”

He added that AI “needs to be tamed; it needs to have human intelligence over the artificial intelligence.”

When it comes to AI, some people apparently expect “magic,” he went on to say. “For some reason, some of the people I met, were sure that you just take a series and show it from one side of the computer, and it goes out dubbed on the other side of the computer and the whole thing costs 35 pence and everybody’s happy.”

But, he said, “This is, sadly, not the case. So, I’m sorry if I’ve broken your hearts.”

However, he added: “Still, AI’s got its benefits.” For example, he said: For voiceover, AI is a fantastic solution…..  The speed of delivery of these things, I mean, the cost … is much lower…. It’s also much faster to deliver.”

He went on to tell attendees: “Voiceover is one thing. Lip sync dubbing is another thing. And lip sync dubbing is something that we are getting to.”

But as good as AI is, he told viewers: “To compare real actors to AI dubbing … would be a very unfair comparison at this point in time. Because we can create voices…. These voices will be expressive up to a point. But, if someone is eating an apple and talking, you’ll hear it when it’s human But, when it’s AI,  you won’t.”

ITS Localisation was presented by MESA in association with the Content Localisation Council and Smart Content Council, and sponsored by Dubformer, Iyuno, AppTek, EIDR, Blu Digital Group, OOONA, Papercup, and Deluxe.