A new ‘reels’ feature from Facebook/Instagram performed in this illustration photo taken at L’Aquila, Italy on August 6, 2020. Facebook launched the new ‘Rel’ feature on Instagram in 50 countries around the world. (Photo by Lorenzo Di Cola/Nurphoto via Getty Images)
Nurphoto through Getty Images
Meta is expanding the AI video translation tool, allowing creators to automatically remove Facebook and Instagram in Hindi and Portuguese, according to a recent announcement.
THE modernizeannounced on October 9, based on initial The English-Spanish translation began in August-a push to break one of the big obstacles into a truly “global” internet.
Technology is interesting. “Meta AI mimics the sound and tone of a creator’s voice to translate the wheels, so the end result is content that feels authentic like the creator, only in another language,” the company said in the statement. In a technically ambitious step, creators can also allow a lip synchronization feature used by AI to match the translated sound with the movement of the speaker’s mouth, creating a more natural and less gloomy viewing experience.
This is a strategic game for the global social media market. Adding Hindi and Portuguese – languages spoken by millions of people around the world – Meta directly aims at some of the largest and most dedicated cylinder markets. The company puts it in this tool to empower the creator and the value proposal seems obvious.
The characteristic is democratized by a service that was once expensive and complex, possibly allowing a creator in Mumbai or Delhi to reach an audience in Brazil or a Portuguese teacher to develop in the United States without a production studio. For Meta, it is perhaps a way to increase the commitment and time spent on its platforms, flooding users’ flows with a recently accessible, algorithmically recommended content from every corner of the globe.
Growth remains controlled, available to Facebook creators with 1,000 fans or more and in all public Instagram accounts in countries where Meta AI is available.
However, the expansion of this powerful technology is not without shades.
While Meta has implemented “controls”, such as a “meta AI tag” and user options to turn off translations or view the original sound, endless compilation is false. As synthetic voices and video become indiscriminate from reality, the boundaries between authentic content and experience with the mediation of AI blur. The feature promises the connection, but it also promotes us to digital spaces where the origin and the original framework of any part of the media can be covered effortlessly – if not completely lost – by AI.
For its part, the expansion of copy helps to dissolve the linguistic barriers and gives more creators a broader range, while on the other hand it could bring us closer to a digital world where every part of the media has been mediated by an invisible AI filter. As the voices become synthetic and the “original” recede, users may need refreshed protective messages around the performance, consent and authenticity of expression. Meta can promise transparency and exception, but this may not answer the way these protections can keep up, if not at all, at the speed at which AI reappears the concept of “original” means.
