North American streaming service Topic launched today its English-language versions of hit international crime series using AI-dubbing technology.
Shows dubbed into English have been around for years. But using AI technology to do the dubbing is a new phenomenon, one that Topic is spearheading in the video streaming sector of the entertainment industry.
In partnering with Israeli AI-dubbing company DeepDub, whose platform provides high-quality, AI-based entertainment localization, Topic has just upped the ante on audience acquisition and engagement amongst its streaming brethren — using AI-dubbed English-language versions of hit TV series to target a specific segment of the viewing population: folks who hate reading subtitles.
In the past, I’ve been like, “You have no idea what you’re missing. This show is excellent!” to people who’ve avoided subtitled shows like the plague (or Covid-19). Now, depending on the title, I might say the same thing or something along the lines of, “Have I got news for you. You can watch an English-dubbed version of it now!”
This history-making first-time deployment of AI-driven dubbing in a TV series — in which non-English-language series are translated and localized for English-speaking audiences, without losing the original audio and vocal experience — can be found right now on Topic, making the US-based streaming service the first platform in the world to release dubbed programming using Deepdub’s artificial intelligence-based platform.
Topic launched its AI-dubbed programming today with English-language versions of the excellent Swedish-Danish crime thriller The Bridge (Bron/Broen), the German-Austrian riff on The Bridge called Pagan Peak (Der Pass), the Finnish mystery-crime drama Arctic Circle (Ivalo), the Russian real-life mystery drama Dead Mountain (Pereval Dyatlova), and the Israeli alternate reality-set drama Autonomies.
Topic’s groundbreaking collaboration with Deepdub will allow the streaming service to quickly and cost effectively build scale with its library and reach a much-wider audience, offering potential (as well as current) subscribers to the SVOD platform a range of non-English-language programs with an alternative to subtitles. As such, Topic will be adding more AI-powered English dubbing to others of its hit international shows, including the series that kicked off the global Nordic noir TV obsession: the International Emmy® Awards-nominated, multi-award-winning Danish crime drama The Killing (Forbrydelsen).
This launch comes in advance of the third anniversary of Topic, which has been rapidly expanding on its mission to curate elevated crime and suspense programming from around the globe. (In what I believe is another first for Topic, the streamer will be the home of the first Greek TV series to be shown in North America. Read more about it and a few other new titles headed to Topic on The Euro TV Place.)
Said Ryan Chanatry, General Manager, Topic:
“Because foreign-language shows such as Netflix’s ‘Squid Game,’ HBO’s ‘Gomorrah,’ and Topic’s ‘Dark Woods’ are growing in popularity, more North American viewers than ever are showing they have a voracious appetite for programs not ‘made in the U.S.’ Now is the perfect moment for Topic to build on that interest with our pioneering partners at Deepdub and offer our viewers new ways to watch even more of our extensive content library curated from multiple countries.”
For viewers who typically go the subtitle route to get every bit of what watching a show in its original language offers — from hearing the beauty of, say, the French or Italian language, to the nuances of actors’ vocal performances, such as those in Sofia Helin’s award-winning turn as Swedish detective Saga Norén in the original version of The Bridge — you can continue to enjoy international TV series on Topic in their original form. And if you’re like me, often too utterly knackered at night to dive into a subtitled program, then AI-powered English dubs might be just the thing for you (and me) to get in on the goods of a fabulous show.
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