Artificial Intelligence (AI) is redefining digital storytelling, and YouTube is the latest platform to expand multilingual content creation. The video-sharing giant is introducing an AI-powered lip-syncing feature that adjusts a creator’s mouth movements to match dubbed audio seamlessly. This innovation follows Meta’s similar rollout for Facebook and Instagram Reels, marking a significant step in AI-enhanced video localization. Announced by Buddhika Kottahachchi, YouTube’s Product Lead for Autodubbing, this feature comes less than a year after YouTube launched its video auto-dubbing tool, during which creators have dubbed over 60 million videos into 20 languages. Previously, dubbed videos contained only translated audio without synchronization between the speaker’s lip movements and the new language track, but this is set to change.
Kottahachchi explained to Digital Trends that the new AI “modifies the pixels on the screen to match the translated speech.” Essentially, YouTube’s system analyzes the original video frame by frame, adjusting the creator’s mouth movements to make it appear as if they are naturally speaking the dubbed language, resulting in a more immersive experience for global audiences. While Meta was the first to introduce lip-syncing AI to social platforms, YouTube’s approach supports more languages at launch, including English, Spanish, German, Portuguese, and French, compared to Instagram and Facebook, which currently limit their translation and lip-sync features to just four languages. YouTube plans to extend this capability to all 20 languages supported by its AI dubbing tool in the near future.
Currently, the feature works best with 1080p videos, although Kottahachchi noted it should still perform well across other standard resolutions, with 4K optimization still in progress. Access to the AI lip-syncing tool is currently limited, with YouTube gradually rolling out the feature to selected creators as part of a test phase. Kottahachchi emphasized that YouTube intends to gather feedback and evaluate performance before expanding access: “We are not ready to make any broad statements about how broadly we will make it available.” This careful rollout follows previous controversies where creators criticized YouTube for employing AI-based video enhancements without necessary transparency. This time, the company appears to prioritize creator control and consent.
As AI-driven dubbing and lip-syncing evolve, platforms like YouTube are enabling creators to reach audiences across linguistic barriers without losing authenticity. By making translated videos feel more natural and engaging, YouTube is enhancing user experience while amplifying creators’ global reach. With this new feature, YouTube joins the trend of tech platforms harnessing AI to humanize digital content, making online video more inclusive and globally connected than ever before.