AI videos: the new avatar of multilingual content

Are you familiar with AI videos? If not, don’t worry, you’re not alone. Over the past two decades, the world of marketing has undergone a digital revolution. From the classic print medium to a multitude of online platforms – marketers today are operating in a much larger, more complex and ever-evolving playing field. What’s more, dynamic content is fast outpacing its static counterpart across all platforms. In other words: visual is the new king, and its kingdom is rapidly expanding.

 

Video killed the text star: the rise of visual content

Trends today are evidence of the fact that attention spans are shrinking and people increasingly prefer to absorb content through videos rather than text. And the proof lies in the pudding: the ever-evolving social platforms we use in our work and personal lives are increasingly moving towards visual information. In fact, global internet traffic from videos will make up 82% of all consumer internet traffic by 2022.

So where does that leave high-quality written content, such as product information, training courses, instruction manuals, pamphlets, which is already out there? Does that mean, as a business, you now have to invest huge amounts of time, money and resources in order to transform your PowerPoint training presentation into a five-minute video? Luckily, the answer is no.

Say hello to Synthesia, a company working on the bleeding edge of AI video generation and personalised multilingual video content technology. So how does this AI-based platform create videos ‘out of thin air’? Well, this was exactly the topic covered in a recent episode of SlaterPod in which Victor Riparbelli, CEO and Co-Founder of Synthesia, was invited to talk more about his company’s pioneering technology. The platform essentially uses advanced AI and deep learning to enable avatars – either generic human avatars or customised avatars based on existing information of their clients – to turn written content into video content. And best of all, the video content can be translated in no time into multiple other languages using a machine translation of the source language, thus making this solution affordable, accessible and scalable.

Text to speech: adding value to the B2C and B2B market

Riparbelli is quick to point out that Synthesia’s technology is not replacing traditional video production, which has its own set of uses and benefits. Rather, the company’s cutting-edge solution entails turning written content (both existing and new) into visuals one AI video at a time.

Affordable video content creation options, such as the one offered by Synthesia, are particularly well suited to B2C and B2B companies that boast a global footprint. In the B2C arena, the company successfully collaborated with PepsiCo brand Lay’s, UNIT9 and 180 Amsterdam to create a personalised video experience. The innovative and interactive global campaign, featuring football star Lionel Messi ‘speaking’ eight different languages, even went on to win a Cannes Lion Award in June of this year.

Content created for both internal and external use on a global scale not only needs to deliver the message loud and clear in multiple languages to multiple audiences, it also needs to be in a format that can be quickly and easily consumed. Finding an economically viable solution that meets these challenging demands is therefore of the essence, and explains why this new-age technology of AI videos has also witnessed rapid growth in the B2B segment in recent years.

The human–machine connection: linguistic expertise and AI

With AI-generated content steadily on the rise, will deep learning eventually replace humans? According to Riparbelli, humans will continue to co-exist alongside AI. This holds especially true for multilingual content, which is why Synthesia sees partnerships with language service providers (LSPs) as an integral part of the work the company does.

There is a synergy between humans and machines that simply cannot be ignored. Any AI-generated content created for a multilingual audience – whether in the form of text or video – must take account of cultural differences and regional nuances, which is why adaptation and localisation play such a key role in language translation.

Much like a diamond in the rough that needs to be polished before it can shine, human post-editors provide the all-important linguistic finish, ensuring that high-quality content, whether auto-generated or manually created, truly dazzles its intended audience – in all languages and across all markets.

Saveen Uthappa

Saveen Uthappa-Eck works as a translator, editor and content writer on the English team. A true-blue language fan, she enjoys crosswords and watching foreign-language shows and movies in her spare time.
Saveen Uthappa