IMAX Might Use AI to Translate Original Content in Real Time

IMAX, the Canadian production theatre company, reportedly announced its partnership with Dubai-based Camb.AI to offer its content in localised languages globally. On Monday, the company reportedly announced that it will be leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) tools to translate its original content into 140 languages to let viewers enjoy it in their local languages. Notably, the technology will only be introduced to the IMAX branded theatres, as per the report. It is believed that IMAX is targeting the rising popularity of non-English content worldwide with this move.

IMAX Reportedly Using AI to Translate Original Content

According to a TechCrunch report, the production theatre company has joined hands with Camb.AI, an AI firm which specialises in speech models. With this collaboration, IMAX is reportedly planning to release its entire content library in localised content globally.

From a strategic perspective, the company is said to be targeting the rising popularity of South Korean, Indonesian, and other Southeast Asian content in Western countries and the rest of the world. While such content is available with subtitles on various platforms, dubbed content is less available due to its higher cost of production.

However, AI-powered dubbing has not been used at a large scale so far. IMAX, on the other hand, is planning to offer real-time AI voice translations in theatres globally. This means theatres in every country will get the company’s original content in their native languages. The report did not specify how IMAX will tackle the challenge of showing content in regions with multiple local languages, such as India.

Camb.AI has reportedly deployed its AI dubbing and speech translations for live sports events such as the Australian Open, Eurovision Sport, and Major League Soccer. It uses the Boli model which specialises in speech-to-text translation, and Mars which performs speech emulation. Both of the models are part of the AI firm’s DubStudio platform which supports 140 languages.

Akshat Prakash, the Co-founder and Chief Technical Officer of Camb.AI told TechCrunch that, unlike companies like OpenAI and Anthropic, it is not trying to horizontally expand its AI tech stack and instead is focusing on vertically enhancing its offerings. The executive also highlighted that some of its large language models (LLMs) have less than 100 million parameters.