Automatic subtitles for videos on YouTube

Google announces it will soon be possible to automatically generate subtitles for movies available on YouTube. The service will be based on the technology of automatic speech recognition (ASR) that is currently used by Google Voice.

It has been possible to manually add subtitles to videos on YouTube for a long time. However, it appears that few users take advantage of this opportunity. Currently, films with subtitles are, in fact, a small part of all available on the site. Google acknowledges that the subtitles generated by the ASR technology are not always perfect, but implementing the technology on YouTube is a step toward the deaf. The Corporation of Mountain View hopes that the voice recognition algorithms will develop over time.

Google also intends to introduce some facilities for users who have created subtitles for movies. After uploading a text file containing subtitles, YouTube will take care of displaying them at the right time.