Spotify has a booming podcast business, but the company is working on a way to expand it to new markets. According to The Verge, Spotify just partnered with OpenAI to automatically translate podcasts.
This is something that could definitely expand Spotify’s podcasting platform. You never know if there’s an amazing podcast that you’re missing out on because you don’t speak that language. Translating the podcasts could open shows up to many audiences.
Spotify will use AI to translate podcasts
As you can tell, this feature will use some serious AI power in order to pull this off. So, it’s fitting that the company contacted one of the leading AI companies to develop this tool. Spotify will take podcast episodes in one language and replace the audio with AI-generated voices. Those voices will speak in different languages. It’s similar to what YouTube is working on.
Right now, this feature is in testing, so you most likely won’t be able to use it for a while. Spotify is partnering with some notable podcast creators on the platform to be a part of the limited test. These figures include people like Lex Fridman, Monica Padman, Bill Simmons, Dax Shephard, and Steve Bartlett. Down the road, it will also include The Rewatchables and an unreleased show from Trevor Noah.
We’re not sure if Spotify is going to test this on a selection of their episodes or if it’s going to translate their entire catalogs right out the gate. What we do know is that they’re going to test translating their episodes into Spanish. It also plans on releasing it in French and German in the coming weeks.
Not only will the voices be in another language, they will actually replicate the voice of the speaker. We’ve seen this type of thing before. A model will train itself on a few seconds of speech from a person and mimic their voice to a pretty impressive degree.
Right now, we’re all in the dark about how widespread this feature will be and who will be able to use it. We don’t know if you’ll need to sign up for a paid subscription or if you’d need to pass some sort of engagement threshold. Only time will tell.