Dubbing is terrible. Can AI fix it?

Our capacity to dub entertainment is growing rapidly with artificial intelligence. Quality is another question.

Just five years ago, when the movie Parasite won a Golden Globe for best foreign language film, Bong Joon Ho, its South Korean director, said in his acceptance speech that American audiences needed to get over their issue with the “one-inch-tall barrier of subtitles.” His point was that there’s a whole world of great cinema beyond English-language films, and we shouldn’t let subtitles be a deal-breaker. That compares to audio dubbing, the technique that places English dialogue over the moving lips of an actor speaking in another language.