YouTube creators are the latest group of entrepreneurs jumping on the A.I. bandwagon, using the technology to break language barriers that have limited the sizes of their audiences and paychecks.
New A.I. translation tools, including in-house tech offered by YouTube, make auto-translation easy, quick, accurate, and sometimes even free. For creators, being able to translate videos of their tutorials, hijinx, and other content into as many different languages as possible offers an easy way to multiply earnings from ad revenue sharing across regions. Jimmy Donaldson, better known as highest-paid creator MrBeast, tested YouTube’s audio dubbing tech on 11 top videos in 11 languages and told YouTube’s Creator Insider earlier this year that it “supercharges the heck out of the video.”
Instead of creating and maintaining separate YouTube channels for various language-speaking audiences (such as French, Spanish, and Japanese), MrBeast now operates one single channel, with the videos automatically playing for users in the language spoken in their region of the world.
Adam Waheed, a creator who often garners over 50 million views per YouTube video of his comedic content, points to auto-translation as the most interesting application of AI he’s seen for his business. He works with company Deeptune (where he’s also an investor) to translate his videos into French, Italian, Spanish and so on with the same voice, inflections and emotions, fortifying his global audience. Next month he plans to launch a Spanish language channel that is built on the company’s AI translation.
“My content is already very global,” he told Fortune. “With me translating, it’s going to explode.”
With the traction he’s seen so far, he believes that he can triple his annual YouTube views from 11.5 billion to about 35 billion with AI translations. And he says this translation using the “insane technology” (his words) only takes 15 minutes per video.
That’s a game-changer for creators. Translating videos from their native languages has traditionally been technologically clunky and linguistically rough as the information conveyed in the originals often gets lost in translation.
YouTube, the video site owned by Google, recognizes the value of helping creators bridge the language barrier.
In February, YouTube invited “thousands” of creators to use an in-house translation tool that makes it easy for them to dub their videos with audio tracks in multi-languages. In early tests prior to the announcement, YouTube attributed 15% of dubbed video watches to non-native language viewing (a company spokesperson declined to provide an updated number).
YouTube is now testing this generative A.I. to translate videos into 40 languages. And while the tool was initially released for creators making standard length YouTube videos, the company is expected to expand the capability to its short-form Shorts videos.
“Generative AI in this whole space—it will have impact across the many dimensions that creators operate in,” Amjad Hanif, YouTube’s vice president of product management for creator products and monetization, tells Fortune in response to a query about how creators can cement generational wealth.
Hanif highlights AI products that include YouTube’s text-to-image, text-to-storyline and translation tools as the next big monetization areas for creators. “[The tools are] going to change the creative process and make it much more accessible to folks who couldn’t do that before–in the same way that shooting a video on your phone empowered millions of creators.”
YouTube is hoping that the combination of A.I. translation and its advertising-sharing program will increase the allure of its platform among creators. The YouTube Partner Program, in which eligible members (users with over 1,000 subscribers and either 4,000 public watch hours in the last 12 months or 10 million Shorts views in the last 90 days) earn 45% of advertiser revenue on Shorts and 55% on classic longer-form content. With the ability to take identical videos and translate them into different languages, creators can use the same content to multiply earnings.
[continue reading below the video]
“There have been consistent issues with talent being able to utilize translations—either because they would have to do it manually or they would hire someone else,” says Christina Jones executive vice president of talent at Digital Brand Architects, which represents over 200 creators. “It was definitely a clunky process, prior to what Google and YouTube are trying to do now.”
While YouTube’s competitors may be working on their own AI dub tech, the video giant’s capabilities appear most advanced. Last year Meta announced that it would auto generate captions on Instagram videos in 17 languages (aimed at deaf and hard-of-hearing users) and its No Language Left Behind project uses AI to translate text content across the internet in 200 languages. In July of 2022 TikTok announced it would auto-caption videos and offer translation tools in at least nine languages (a spokesperson for the company declined to provide an update on these functions). Snap works with partners to generate captions on content in 12 languages, but currently offers no in-house translation services.
Waheed, who earned $7.3 million in 2021, largely from YouTube ad revenue sharing, notes that the YouTube advertising market globally is not as lucrative as it is in the US, therefore he commands less abroad on a CPM basis. This sentiment is shared by Jones at Digital Brand Architects. “We haven’t seen that much of a difference, transparently, because most of the money is in the U.S. market,” she says.
But Waheed is confident YouTube will mature in non-U.S. countries, and when it does, Waheed wants to already be a household name—everywhere. “It’s all about getting there first,” he says, hoping that the earnings will follow.
