@bedast I would also add I find it quite helpful to start with a set of automatically generated captions, and then correct them. I don't do this often, but it saves me loads of time in a part-time job.

Is this a bit like people being annoyed at Mozilla using AI for on-device browser translation, even though that's very useful? I'm not sure if that's generative, but I'd guess not.

@bedast It’s tricky because you’re certainly right about the amount of video with no captions, and the unfair inaccessibility of that. But translation AI is exactly the same tech as “generative” or “LLM”, it is statistical modeling. It is not different in any way, including errors and fuel and water demands. It’s like vehicle engines and tires: they do a tremendous amount of good every day, including for accessibility, but they also have terrible side effects that warrant complaints.

@bedast

I will stick to Open Subtitles as it is more reliable, & will provide better accuracy for slang and other contextual factors

there is no #Enshitification of #AI, when AI is shit to begin with

@bedast the worry I do have regarding this feature is it’s will provide an excuse to some (and that will grow over time) to stop investimg into producing quality captioning. Why spending money/ressources when there is an IA who will generate some [crappy, or just basic one, if not errornous] captions, automatically.

I beleive on the long run, thats will be an innevitable drop on the quality, in exchange of availability.

Damn if you do, damn if you don’t, as they say.

@bedast

Maybe this needs to be called "voice recognition" instead of AI?

Using a term that nowadays means something awful is going to make misunderstandings more likely?

(When I read the news about VLC using AI I wrongly assumed it meant generative AI, as that has totally dominated discourse.)

@bedast I think you completely missed the point of that post asking for different player recommendations. She is well aware that they are implementing STT and not GenAI.
She explains that automatic captions are often bad and the availability of them lead to many people not creating proper subtitles anymore.

See: https://tech.lgbt/@nina_kali_nina/113798526319597617
and
https://tech.lgbt/@nina_kali_nina/113798496156467982

@bedast Then don't call it AI. Call it speech to text. But if it uses a language model to more effectively predict words based on context rather than doing an analyzable mechanical local transformation, it is at least partly the "bad kind of AI" - it has the capacity to introduce biases from training data making output that "sounds right" but means the wrong thing, which is much worse than substituting nonsensical homophones now and then (which the reader will immediately recognize as mistakes). Same principle as why autocorrected text is worse than text with typos.

@bedast Hear hear, this is why I'm against people labeling anything ML as AI.

@bedast @chriscz Thank you. I really dislike the immediate hate and overreaction for anything that even mentions AI.

@bedast We do not want AI in any product whatsoever.
No GenAI. No specialized AI. No "it's for the good of the people" AI. Certainly no AI trained by OpenAI.
Is it so hard to understand?
Create tools to manually write subtitles more easily. Yes. Please.
#humanmade #noai

@bedast@beige.party As much as I hate AI in general (especially generative AI and LLMs), I think I agree this is a fair usage for it, together with OCR and automatic translation. ​:celredcrystalheart:​​​

@bedast@beige.party I don't think generative AI is the only problem. I don't even think generative AI is the problem by itself.

@bedast I think the biggest issue currently is: AI is way to overused in marketing. In fedi, many bubbles mostly don't like AI at all, because for them, AI = GenAI.

Of course, you could look at the automated subtitles on youtube, where swears are censored (which is stupid, lol), or are just plain bad in languages other than English. (e.g. in German it's quite useless.)

So what is the correct thing to do? I'd say: Look at how the subtitles perform. How much performance do they cost? Are they enabled by default (aka. opt out via an options / context menu)? How well do they work in other languages? Do they censor anything? How's the delay?

I mean, I don't know anyone who actively says voice assistants / voice transcription functions in programs are bad *because* they use AI for Speech to Text. And, if I may say... The text transcription on my Pixel phone is working fully locally, in German, without any issues. It's possible, It's not bad. AND: It's not actively advertised as "we have the best AI to do transcription".

Yes, I know... Transcription is not the same as subtitles, but it's still more close to it than having nothing.

Even though I don't need subtitles and can't hear the word "AI" one more time, I'm interested to see, what VLC does there.

Though, I'd love to see a released version 4.0, which would fix some issues I have with VLC, but... eh, we can't have everything I suppose.

@bedast I don't get the fuss tbh? VLC is just adding what this app on Linux has been doing for years. https://flathub.org/apps/net.sapples.LiveCaptions

@bedast #VLC didn't invent this, Windows 10 (!) has had this AI captions for two years at an OS level.

@bedast so long the model is outsourced to OpenAI and the like. You can always be certain everything you ever watch on VLC will be beamed to a third party "for improvement". Auto-generated subtitles might be better than no subtitles, but not at the cost of constantly feeding third parties with your data.

And of course, if we are talking of OpenAI's models, they are known to outright invent nonsense phrases when they tried audio transcription a few months ago.

Id not trust an hallucinegic liar.

@bedast I'm not surprised. Everybody also loves the fediverse not having any algorithms at all, after all.
Broad brushes ...

@bedast
It's also great when it's a video in a foreign language.

For instance, when it's an English video, and you're French. This can be really useful. Especially when there is a strong accent which is difficult to understand.

And I heard there is also automatic translation too, which is awesome.

Oh, by the way, that's what youtube does on its video nowadays...

@bedast VLC uses AI?

@bedast Uhm, if it generates text from video or sound then it's genAI? Maybe the problem is not whether is genAI or not, but what it is used for?

@bedast you seem to be pretty aware of the technical details of this particular AI.

Do you have any reading/links on this that allow people to know the technical details?

The best article I can find, had no technical details:
https://www.tomshardware.com/software/vlc-demoes-ai-generated-subtitles-as-it-hits-new-milestone-of-6-billion-downloads

https://www.theverge.com/2025/1/9/24339817/vlc-player-automatic-ai-subtitling-translation

https://www.techradar.com/computing/artificial-intelligence/ai-will-start-subtitling-your-videos-thanks-to-vlc

The video here does mention open source model (which are still LLMs)
https://x.com/videolan/status/1877072497146781946/mediaViewer?currentTweet=1877072497146781946&currentTweetUser=videolan

@bedast They should've called it Accessibility Interface.

@bedast@beige.party just curious personally, are they using whisper or something else?

@bedast I treat both people who mindlessly promote AI (compare with so-called crypto bros) and Luddites stating AI=evil as fanatics. Like, neither point has a lot of thought in it.

@bedast
I don't know what the solution is.

The problem is that it will be used to replace humans.

@bedast are VLC considering using whisper.cpp or another GGML based project? I think it would be neat if yes

@bedast so they are doing MLtranscription?

@bedast I am almost deaf and rely on captions. I'd rather have no captions than auto-generated. Auto-generated captions, however they are made, are awful. It is an insult to have to deal with them. It will also encourge folks making media to skip putting any effort into captioning because auto-generated is "good enough". But, they are only good enough for folks who can also hear what is being said. I will bring up this point and the response is always, "Have you tried them lately."

I try them everyday, whether I want to or not.

Hearling-abled folks love to tell us what we should be grateful for, though.

@bedast i agree that it could be useful but take a look at how whisper works.

@bedast good feature, bad marketing name?

@bedast I would like to ignore all the AI debates and specifically address the claim that "This is not generative AI".
Directly quoting https://x.com/videolan/status/1877072497146781946, "VLC automatic subtitles generation and translation based on local and open source AI models" it is, according to Wikipedia definition atleast - a generative AI.

Not sure what is exactly a point I'm trying to make with it but there surely is some

@bedast @carol what amuses me in all this is remembering the exact same conversation happening with respect to watching video on a computer versus on a TV or in a theater. The original potato quality video on computers was decried as terrible. And it was terrible, but then it got better.

@bedast I am happy to see this kind of take as I feel the same way. I can understand the weariness of people when they hear the term AI because the term has been poisoned by bad actors.

But this, I think, is a good benefit of "AI". It's allowing accessibility for those who cannot hear to be able to enjoy things like everyone else. Yes, we could have people responsible for adding closed captions to most things, but this will help with the home made videos, etc..

@bedast@beige.party I'm curious then, why use the AI moniker at all? Computerized speech recognition has been around for numerous years, and every product getting an "AI" label slapped on it now is turning people off, rightly or wrongly. Generative or not, as soon as you say AI I'm thinking big waste of power, probably more marketing than substance, etc.

@bedast@beige.party Maybe not call it AI Captions but just Automatic Captions like in the "olden" days?