There may be some podcasters you’ve heard about online or from various friends that you want to listen to but whose language you don’t understand. Fortunately, Spotify is now starting to offer you a good solution: Translating the broadcast into other languages using the podcaster’s own voice. This new ability comes true, of course, thanks to artificial intelligence.
The company has partnered with some podcasters to translate English episodes into Spanish with its new tool, and plans to roll out French and German translations in the coming weeks. The first episodes will come from big names like Dax Shepard, Monica Padman, Lex Fridman, Bill Simmons and Steven Bartlett. Spotify plans to expand the lineup to include The Rewatchables from The Ringer and Trevor Noah’s upcoming show.
The basis of the translation feature is OpenAI’s voice transcription tool Whisper, which can both transcribe English conversations and translate other languages into English. But Spotify’s tool goes beyond speech-to-text translation, translating a podcast into a different language and reproducing it in a synthesized version of the podcast hosts’ own voice.
“By matching the content owner’s own voice, Voice Translation gives listeners around the world the power to discover and be inspired by new podcasters more authentically than ever before,” Ziad Sultan, Spotify’s vice president of personalization, said in a statement.
It can be said that OpenAI is probably at the basis of the audio copying part of this new feature. The AI company is currently making several announcements, including the launch of a tool that can create “human-like voice from just text and a few seconds of sample speech.” OpenAI says it has intentionally limited the availability of this tool due to security and privacy concerns.
That’s probably why Spotify says its translation technology is only being tested with a “select group” of podcasters for now. The company did not elaborate on how widely it plans to make the tool available or when to expect expansion.
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