I’ll allow their use of AI.

The problem with most any technology isn’t that it exists, just how it’s used. Like I’ve heard Netflix has started using “AI” to dub content, including adjusting the lip sync, and from basically the moment “AI” became the trend of the day, I was thinking about how it could be used very effectively in dubbing to make content much more accessible across the world — but when this is being done by a for-profit corporation, I’m of course going to be skeptical of it. It isn’t exactly being done in the way I would’ve done it myself.

VLC on the other hand is FOSS developed by a non-profit organization, and it’s calling this new feature “AI” because that’s a word people recognize. “AI” is above all else a brand: if VLC were just upfront about how there’s no real meaningful difference between this new feature and how automated audio transcription and local translation have worked for many years already, at least that I can tell, I guess that wouldn’t have looked as “cool” on a booth sign.

Finding VLC back in the day was euphoric; no more worrying about esoteric formats or “oh sorry you don’t have that codec good luck finding it,” everything just worked.