VLC media player will soon offer AI-generated subtitles in multiple languages

3 hours ago 1

VLC is one of the most popular multiplatform media players, and VideoLAN – the company behind the app – has been working on a major update. Soon, users will have access to AI-generated subtitles in multiple languages, even offline.

AI-generated subtitles coming to VLC

VideoLAN teased the technology at CES 2025 and shared some videos of it in action. Essentially, VLC will use AI to automatically generate subtitles for videos. The AI will also be able to translate the subtitles into other languages, all offline and in real time.

“At the same time we have automatic translation working to translate the subtitles to your own language,” Kempf says, with more than 100 languages planned for support. “What’s important is that this is running on your machine locally, offline, without any cloud services. It runs directly inside the executable.”

In a series of videos shared on X, VideoLAN showed open-source AI models generating real-time subtitles in different languages. According to the company, the feature will work not only for pre-recorded videos, but also for live broadcasts.

As noted by The Verge, VideoLAN had already been developing a plugin based on OpenAI’s Whisper to generate subtitles, but the new demo seems to show a native feature built right into the VLC app. Details on when exactly the feature will be available to the public remain unclear.

In March 2024, VideoLAN announced that it has been working on version 4.0 of VLC, which will be a major update that will rewrite “the whole core” of the app. The update, which is still under development, brings a refreshed interface and some other new features. VideoLAN also said it was working on a version for Apple Vision Pro.

You can find the links to download VLC on the app’s official website.