YouTube Begins Testing AI-Powered Lip-Sync for Dubbed Videos After Instagram’s Rollout

Artificial Intelligence (AI) continues to redefine digital storytelling, and YouTube is the latest platform to push the boundaries of multilingual content creation. The video-sharing giant is rolling out an AI-powered lip-syncing feature that adjusts a creator’s mouth movements to align seamlessly with dubbed audio. This innovation follows Meta’s similar rollout for Facebook and Instagram Reels, marking a new chapter in AI-enhanced video localisation.

The feature, announced by Buddhika Kottahachchi, YouTube’s Product Lead for Autodubbing, comes less than a year after YouTube launched its video auto-dubbing tool. In that short time, creators have already dubbed over 60 million videos into 20 languages. However, the dubbed videos so far only featured translated audio, with no synchronisation between the speaker’s lip movements and the new language track. That’s about to change.

Kottahachchi explained to Digital Trends that the new AI “modifies the pixels on the screen to match the translated speech.” Essentially, YouTube’s system analyses the original video frame by frame and adjusts the creator’s mouth movements to make them appear as if they’re naturally speaking the dubbed language. The result is a more immersive and realistic viewing experience for global audiences.

While Meta was the first to bring lip-syncing AI to social platforms, YouTube’s approach supports more languages at launch — including English, Spanish, German, Portuguese, and French. In comparison, Instagram and Facebook currently limit their translation and lip-sync features to just four languages. YouTube aims to extend this capability to all 20 languages that its AI dubbing tool already supports in the near future.

For now, the feature works best with 1080p videos, though Kottahachchi noted it should still perform well across other standard resolutions. “But generally, it should work with the video resolutions that you upload,” he said, adding that 4K optimisation is still in progress.

Access to the AI lip-syncing tool is currently limited. YouTube is rolling out the feature gradually to selected creators as part of a test phase. Kottahachchi emphasised that YouTube intends to gather feedback and evaluate performance before expanding access: “We are not ready to make any broad statements about how broadly we will make it available.”

This careful rollout comes after previous controversies where creators criticised YouTube for employing AI-based video enhancements without sufficient transparency. This time, the company appears to be prioritising creator control and consent.

As AI-driven dubbing and lip-syncing continue to evolve, platforms like YouTube are enabling creators to reach audiences across linguistic barriers without losing authenticity. By making translated videos feel more natural and engaging, YouTube is not only enhancing user experience but also amplifying creators’ global reach.

With this new feature, YouTube joins the growing wave of tech platforms harnessing AI to humanise digital content, making the world of online video more inclusive and globally connected than ever before.