VLC Media Player is an open source project developed by Videolan and is acquiring new artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities. On the recently concluded Consumer Electronics Program (CES 2025), the project demonstrates AI-powered subtitles that can generate and display subtitles. The feature also supports real-time translation and instantly generates translated subtitles in multiple languages. The AI capabilities of the media player will be powered by open source and local large language model (LLMS) and offline capabilities. There is no message when this feature will be pushed to users.
VLC obtains AI-generated subtitles function
AI-generated subtitles have become increasingly popular recently. Samsung has launched its New Vision AI technology to generate subtitles in real time. Google has previously added the feature of express subtitles on all devices running Android 14 or updated in the United States.
In an article on X (formerly known as Twitter), video president Jean-Baptiste Kempf showed off the new AI capabilities of VLC media players and highlighted the generation of subtitles and Translation is based on local and open source AI models.
The open source AI model is a model available in the public domain that can be used and built into the software without paying any licensing fees from the developer or parent company. Some of these examples include Llama 3.1 405B for Meta, Mixtral 8x22b and DeepSeek for Alibaba.
Videolan adds AI-generated subtitle features locally. Adds AI-generated subtitle features locally. Since the feature is built into the application, it works locally without cloud support.
Although the team didn’t address whether it would significantly increase the basic requirements needed to run a VLC media player, it said in an article: “The goal is not to rely on expensive cloud operations!”
It is worth noting that the videotape displays AI-generated subtitles in English, French, Hebrew, German and Japanese. KEMPF also claims that ultimately, VLC’s AI-generated subtitles feature will support more than 100 languages. The project has not announced the release date for the feature.
