If you thought AI-powered subtitles were a bad idea, then you’ll want to see what Prime Video has cooked up. Or maybe you don’t. Amazon, with a seemingly endless stream of money and artificial intelligence tech on hand, feels the time is ripe for AI-powered dubbing on certain licensed movies and series.
Amazon is in the process of stuffing AI into nearly every revenue stream it has, most recently implementing a subscription-based Alexa+ that was designed to serve as a smarter home assistant (and the prequel to Her). Prime Video is no stranger to AI tech, either, having brought AI summaries to the platform in 2024.
Primed for AI
It may sound like a wild idea, but we see the vision – if and only if Amazon can pull them off correctly. Foreign films and TV shows are bigger than ever, with creators like Bong Joon-Ho (Parasite) and Hwang Dong-hyuk (Squid Game) being recognised internationally. Oftentimes, however, international shows and movies don’t get the necessary budget for a dub. And we certainly can’t ask folks to simply read the subtitles, right?
“At Prime Video, we believe in improving customers’ experience with practical and useful AI innovation,” said Raf Soltanovich, VP of technology at Prime Video. “AI-aided dubbing is only available on titles that do not have dubbing support, and we are eager to explore a new way to make series and movies more accessible and enjoyable.”
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Amazon is keeping the test small. Only twelve movies and series can use these new AI powers (in English and Latin American Spanish), with Amazon only mentioning three: El Cid: La Leyenda, Mi Mamá Lora, and Long Lost. Anyone with a Prime Video subscription can try out the AI dubs now, and that’s exactly what we did.
We switched on El Cid: La Leyenda or as Prime Video’s monotonous robotic AI calls it, The Legend of El Cid. We guess it’s working? We won’t pretend we can speak enough Spanish to accurately judge the AI’s translation abilities, but for the most part, it matched up with the tacked-on subtitles. It doesn’t quite match the cadence of the native speaker’s audio, but hopefully, that’s something Amazon can expand upon in the future.
