The world’s most popular VLC Media Player will soon allow users to get AI-generated subtitles. This emerged at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2025 in Las Vegas where the company VideoLAN presented a demo of the offline subtitle working on the VLC media player. The company has started work on it as the app reached 6 billion downloads.
So far, the popular media player allows users to select subtitles to run offline or download them online if it’s not already there on the device. But the AI-generated subtitles could be a game-changer. With this feature on, you won’t have to go through steps to download and manually select subtitles for video content. You also don’t need to bother downloading one from the app or web.
The feature uses open-source AI models to generate real-time subtitles and translations.
The AI feature will auto-generate subtitles for your favorite web series, movies, and other video content. It means you won’t need to have an internet connection to get a subtitle to your favorite video on the VLC app.
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Translation and AI-powered offline subtitles coming in VLC media player
What is also interesting is that the AI will also be capable of translating subtitles into other languages both offline and online. It’s said that auto-generated subtitles and translations will support 100 languages.
Talking about the new feature, Jean-Baptiste Kempf, president of VideoLAN, said “At the same time we have automatic translation working to translate the subtitles to your own language. What’s important is that this is running on your machine locally, offline, without any cloud services. It runs directly inside the executable.”
Sharing a video on X (formerly Twitter), VideoLAN showed VLC running subtitles in different languages. The AI subtitles will work on pre-recorded videos and live broadcasts too.
Media outlets state that initially, VideoLAN was preparing for this offline subtitle feature with a plugin. However, the demo shows native support for the feature. It means that the app will come with built-in support to run subtitles with AI.
However, the company hasn’t explicitly said when the features will roll out to the users. But we expect that to happen somewhere in 2025.
Why is VLC Media Player so popular?
The biggest reason VLC Media Player is so widely popular is that it’s an open-source project and runs ad-free. From a user’s perspective, an app without any ads adds greater value. Also, it’s super easy to use, intuitive, and supports various media codecs backed by a user-friendly User Interface.
VLC project began in 1996 at Ecole Centrale Paris as a student project to stream videos. Over the years and to date, it evolved to become one of the most popular media players on both computers and smartphones.
Do you use VLC Media Player? How great would it be to have the AI genearing subtitles for videos on your device without needing an internet? Do share in our comment section below.
