Now VLC Is Adding AI, For Subtitles
Also Hits Six Billion Downloads
It’s fair to say that VLC player is popular, as it has one download for just about every person on the planet. Of course the distribution isn’t quite that even, those reading this probably each account for dozens of installs at the very least. The free player is just short of 30 years old, that anniversary will be next year, and has evolved over time, but not as much as it is about to.
At CES 2025 it was announced that future versions of VLC will offer AI generated subtitles using open-source AI models that run locally so you won’t need an internet connection to use. They haven’t specified when this will occur, but it will certainly increase the size of the download and install. The captions will likely suffer from interesting interpretations when you listen to videos containing highly technical details, but could prove amusing. As you would expect, VLC will include numerous languages which could actually make this a useful feature.
The new feature automatically generates real-time subtitles -- which can then also be translated in many languages -- for any video using open-source AI models that run locally on users' devices, eliminating the need for internet connectivity or cloud services, VideoLAN demoed at CES.
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