The widely acclaimed open-source VLC video player was showcased at CES 2025, featuring groundbreaking automatic AI subtitling and translation capabilities, generated locally and offline in real time. VideoLAN, the parent organization, released a video on Tuesday where president Jean-Baptiste Kempf demonstrates this innovative feature, which utilizes open-source AI models to create subtitles for videos in multiple languages.
“Simultaneously, we have automatic translation functioning to convert the subtitles to your preferred language,” Kempf explained, indicating plans for support in over 100 languages. “What’s crucial is that this runs on your local machine, offline, without relying on any cloud services. It operates directly within the executable.”
VLC automatic subtitles generation and translation based on local and open source AI models running on your machine working offline, and supporting numerous languages!
Demo can be found on our #CES2025 booth in Eureka Park. pic.twitter.com/UVmgT6K4ds— VideoLAN (@videolan) January 8, 2025
The development of AI-powered subtitling has been in progress for some time through a plug-in utilizing OpenAI’s Whisper speech recognition system. However, this new demonstration seems to integrate the functionality directly within the VLC application, allowing for real-time generated translated subtitles. There is currently no announcement on when this feature will be officially released.
This week, VideoLAN also celebrated surpassing 6 billion downloads, with Kempf proudly stating, “The number of active users of VLC is actually growing, even amid the streaming services era.”
As CES 2025 continues, we are eager to catch up with VideoLAN at the exhibition to witness the AI subtitling feature in action ourselves.
