If you haven’t used ChatGPT, Gemini, or other genAI products yet, or if you don’t believe that all the buzz surrounding AI in recent years is justified, I’m going to show you what is undoubtedly the greatest application of AI to date. This feature will make you even more of a ChatGPT enthusiast, like me, since it further demonstrates how AI technologies can enhance many facets of our life.
The creators of the widely used free VLC program, which can play any video file with ease, have devised a useful application of artificial intelligence for users who require subtitles when using VLC.
VideoLAN, the parent company of VLC, demonstrated at CES 2025 how the player uses on-device AI to provide translation and subtitles in real-time while a video is playing.
It is not new for AI to translate languages or provide real-time voice file transcripts. VideoLAN did not create it. These features can be seen in Samsung foldables and Galaxy AI phones like the Galaxy S24. If you choose, ChatGPT can converse with you in various languages and translate between them. It’s impressive how VideoLAN uses this technology to address a common issue that many VLC users may encounter.
The Verge claims that VLC will eventually support 100 languages. During CES, Jean-Baptiste Kempf, president of VideoLAN, stated, “We have automatic translation working to translate the subtitles to your own language.” The most crucial thing is that this is operating locally, offline, and without the use of cloud services on your computer.
VideoLAN will leverage open-source AI for the feature, which is the best aspect of VLC’s usage of AI to provide real-time subtitles and translation. Thus, it won’t move to ChatGPT or another service provider. For privacy concerns, the AI that runs on the gadget is yet another fantastic feature. It indicates that the model will not communicate users’ VLC activities to any servers. Although all of that sounds fantastic, it’s unclear when or whose AI VideoLAN will use to provide real-time AI subtitles and translations to VLC. It is unclear if consumers would be able to access the feature for free.
VideoLAN celebrated 6 billion downloads last week, demonstrating how widely used VLC is in the streaming era. The reason the video player is so popular, however, is that it is free. On the other hand, even the open-source, on-device version of the AI-featured VLC player may cost you money.
