Business
Will AI make language dubbing easy for film and TV?
Technology Reporter
XYZ FilmsFinding international films that might appeal to the US market is an important part of the work XYZ Films.
Maxime Cottray is the chief operating officer at the Los Angeles-based independent studio.
He says the US market has always been tough for foreign language films.
“It’s been limited to coastal New York viewers through art house films,” he says.
It’s partly a language problem.
“America is not a culture which has grown up with subtitles or dubbing like Europe has,” he points out.
But that language hurdle might be easier to clear with a new AI-driven dubbing system.
The audio and video of a recent film, Watch the Skies, a Swedish sci-fi film, was fed into a digital tool called DeepEditor.
It manipulates the video to make it look like actors are genuinely speaking the language the film is made into.
“The first time I saw the results of the tech two years ago I thought it was good, but having seen the latest cut, it’s amazing. I’m convinced that if the average person if saw it, they wouldn’t notice it – they’d assume they were speaking whatever language that is,” says Mr Cottray.
The English version of Watch The Skies was released in 110 AMC Theatres across the US in May.
“To contextualise this result, if the film were not dubbed into English, the film would never have made it into US cinemas in the first place,” says Mr Cottray.
“US audiences were able to see a Swedish independent film that otherwise only a very niche audience would have otherwise seen.”
He says that AMC plans to run more releases like this.
FlawlessDeepEditor was developed by Flawless, which is headquartered in Soho, London.
Writer and director Scott Mann founded the company in 2020, having worked on films including Heist, The Tournament and Final Score.
He felt that traditional dubbing techniques for the international versions of his films didn’t quite match the emotional impact of the originals.
“When I worked on Heist in 2014, with a brilliant cast including Robert De Niro, and then I saw that movie translated to a different language, that’s when I first realised that no wonder the movies and TV don’t travel well, because the old world of dubbing really kind of changes everything about the film,” says Mr Mann, now based in Los Angeles.
“It’s all out of sync, and it’s performed differently. And from a purist filmmaking perspective, a very much lower grade product is being seen by the rest of the world.”
FlawlessFlawless developed its own technology for identifying and modifying faces, based on a method first presented in a research paper in 2018.
“DeepEditor uses a combination of face detection, facial recognition, landmark detection [such as facial features] and 3D face tracking to understand the actor’s appearance, physical actions and emotional performance in every shot,” says Mr Mann.
The tech can preserve actors’ original performances across languages, without reshoots or re-recordings, reducing costs and time, he says.
According to him, Watch the Skies was the world’s first fully visually-dubbed feature film.
As well as giving an actor the appearance of speaking another language, DeepEditor can also transfer a better performance from one take into another, or swap a new line of dialogue, while keep the original performance with its emotional content intact.
Thanks to the explosion of streaming platforms such as Netflix and Apple, the global film dubbing market is set to increase from US$4bn (£3bn) in 2024 to $7.6bn by 2033, according to a report by Business Research Insights.
Mr Mann won’t say how much the tech costs but says it varies per project. “I’d say it works out at about a tenth of the cost of shooting it or changing it any other way.”
His customers include “pretty much all the really big streamers”.
Mr Mann believes the technology will enable films to be seen by a wider audience.
“There is an enormous amount of incredible kind of cinema and TV out there that is just never seen by English speaking folks, because many don’t want to watch it with dubbing and subtitles,” says Mr Mann.
The tech isn’t here to replace actors, says Mann, who says voice actors are used rather than being replaced with synthetic voices.
“What we found is that if you make the tools for the actual creatives and the artists themselves, that’s the right way of doing it… they get kind of the power tools to do their art and that can feed into the finished product. That’s the opposite of a lot of approaches that other tech companies have taken.”
Natan DvirHowever, Neta Alexander, assistant professor of film and media at Yale University, says that while the promise of wider distribution is tempting, using AI to reconfigure performances for non-native markets risks eroding the specificity and texture of language, culture, and gesture.
“If all foreign films are adapted to look and sound English, the audience’s relationship with the foreign becomes increasingly mediated, synthetic, and sanitised,” she says.
“This could discourage cross-cultural literacy and disincentivise support for subtitled or original-language screenings.”
Meanwhile, she says, the displacement of subtitles, a key tool for language learners, immigrants, deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers and many others, raises concerns about accessibility.
“Closed captioning is not just a workaround; it’s a method of preserving the integrity of both visual and auditory storytelling for diverse audiences,” says Prof Alexander.
Replacing this with automated mimicry suggests a disturbing turn toward commodified and monolingual film culture, she says.
“Rather than ask how to make foreign films easier for English-speaking audiences, we might better ask how to build audiences that are willing to meet diverse cinema on its own terms.”
Susan Monarez, President Donald Trump’s nominee to be the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), arrives to testify for her confirmation hearing before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions in the Dirksen Senate Office Building on June 25, 2025 in Washington, DC.
Kayla Bartkowski | Getty Images
The White House on Thursday said President Donald Trump has fired Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Susan Monarez after she refused to resign, and that a new replacement will be named soon.
“The president fired her, which he has every right to do,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said during a briefing.
She said Trump has “the authority to fire those who are not aligned with his mission,” and that he or Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will announce a new CDC director “very soon.”
In a statement, lawyers for Monarez said they were “not aware of anything new happening.”
Earlier Thursday, Monarez’s attorney Mark Zaid said Monarez would remain in the role because she is a presidential appointee and only Trump can fire her. Zaid said White House personnel had tried to fire her, not the president.
“Receiving an email from an HR staffer simply saying ‘you’re fired’ is insufficient as a matter of law to constitute the termination of a federal employee, especially one appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate,” Zaid said.
He also said she “refused to rubber-stamp unscientific, reckless directives and fire dedicated health experts” and that “she chose protecting the public over serving a political agenda.”
“For that, she has been targeted,” he said.
Monarez and Kennedy were at odds over vaccine policy, The New York Times reported Wednesday, citing an anonymous administration official.
Kennedy, a prominent vaccine skeptic, has taken several steps to change immunization policy in the U.S.
Monarez was sworn in on July 31. A longtime federal government scientist, she is the first CDC director to be confirmed by the Senate following a new law passed during the pandemic that required lawmakers to approve nominees for the role.
Trump’s move to oust her is the latest in a leadership upheaval at the CDC.
At least four other top health officials announced Wednesday that they were quitting the agency shortly after HHS said Monarez was “no longer” the director of the CDC in a post on X.
In a Fox News interview Thursday morning, Kennedy declined to comment on “personnel issues.” But he said the agency “is in trouble, and we need to fix it, and we are fixing it, and it may be that some people should not be working there anymore.”
Kennedy said Trump has “very, very ambitious hopes for the CDC right now.” But he said the CDC “has problems,” claiming that the agency took the “wrong” approach when it came to social distancing, masking and school closures during the Covid pandemic.
“We need to look at the priorities of the agency, if there’s really a deeply, deeply embedded … malaise at the agency, and we need strong leadership that will go in there and that will be able to execute on President Trump’s broad ambitions for this agency, the gold standard science and to what it was when we were growing up, which was the most respected health agency in the world,” Kennedy said.
The leadership departures come at a tumultuous time for the agency, which is reeling from a gunman’s attack on the CDC’s Atlanta headquarters on Aug. 8. A police officer died in the shooting.
Correction: This article has been updated to reflect the correct day the White House said Trump fired Susan Monarez after she refused to resign, and to reflect the correct wording of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s last quote.
— CNBC’s Angelica Peebles contributed to this report.
Logo of Best Buy displayed outside a Best Buy store in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, on March 22, 2025.
Artur Widak | Nurphoto | Getty Images
Best Buy surpassed Wall Street revenue and earnings expectations for its most recent quarter on Thursday, but stuck with its full-year forecast, citing tariff uncertainty.
On the company’s earnings call, CEO Corie Barry said the retailer is “increasingly confident about our plans for the back half of the year.” She said the company is “trending toward the higher end of our sales range.”
Yet she said, “given the uncertainty of potential tariff impacts in the back half, both on consumers overall as well as our business, we feel it is prudent to maintain the annual guidance we provided last quarter.”
The consumer electronics retailer said it expects revenue of $41.1 billion to $41.9 billion and adjusted earnings per share in a range of $6.15 to $6.30 for its full fiscal year 2026. In May, Best Buy had cut its full-year profit guidance from a prior range of $6.20 to $6.60.
The middle of Best Buy’s expected full-year revenue range would be roughly flat to its revenue of $41.53 billion in the previous year. Best Buy said it expects full-year comparable sales, a metric that tracks online sales and sales at stores open at least 14 months, to range between a 1% decline and a 1% increase.
Chief Financial Officer Matt Bilunas said the company’s full-year guidance reflects that some shoppers could hold off on purchases in the third quarter. He said the retailer could see a slowdown in the business in October “as people are waiting for those holiday deals to come.”
For Best Buy, back-to-school season is a crucial time as families and students come to the store for laptops, tablets and more. Barry said the company has seen “a strong customer response” to its sales events during the season.
“These results demonstrate an important aspect of our thesis: Our model really shines when there is innovation,” she said.
Shares of Best Buy were down about 4% in afternoon trading.
Here’s how the retailer did for the three-month period that ended August 2 compared with what Wall Street was expecting, according to a survey of analysts by LSEG:
- Earnings per share: $1.28 adjusted vs. $1.21 expected
- Revenue: $9.44 billion vs. $9.24 billion expected
Best Buy’s net income for the fiscal second quarter of 2026 fell to $186 million, or 87 cents per share, from $291 million, or $1.34 per share, in the year-ago quarter. Adjusting for one-time items, including restructuring charges, Best Buy reported earnings per share of $1.28.
Revenue increased from $9.29 billion in the year-ago quarter.
Best Buy has been navigating a challenging trifecta of factors. Customers have bought fewer kitchen appliances as they put off home purchases and projects because of higher interest rates. Some have hesitated to splurge on pricier items because of tariff-related uncertainty or held out on tech replacements as they wait for new or eye-catching items. The company’s annual sales have declined for the past three years.
To spur growth, Best Buy launched a third-party marketplace earlier this month to offer shoppers a wider selection of consumer electronics, accessories and more. On the marketplace, sellers who apply for the platform can list their own brands and items on Best Buy’s website and app.
The company already increased prices on some items because of tariff-related higher costs, Barry said on a mid-May call with reporters. She did not specify which items now cost more and described price increases as “the very last resort.”
Still, tariffs did not have a material impact on fiscal second-quarter financial results, Barry said on the company’s earnings call Thursday.
Shopping patterns
Barry said that shopping patterns at Best Buy have not changed from previous quarters. She said customers are “resilient, but deal-focused” and have been attracted to the company’s sales events like the one it held in July.
“In the current environment, customers continue to be thoughtful about big ticket purchases and are willing to spend on high price point products when they need to, or when there is technology innovation,” she said.
Best Buy’s comparable sales rose 1.6% in the fiscal second quarter compared to the year-ago period. That marked the company’s highest growth in three years, Barry said on the company’s earnings call.
In the U.S., comparable sales increased 1.1%, as customers bought mobile phones, video gaming equipment and items from its computing category. However, those sales trends were partially offset by weaker sales of appliances, home theaters, tablets and drones, the company said.
Investors have looked for signs that the replacement cycle is picking up about five years after consumers stocked up on laptops, kitchen appliances, computer screens and more during the Covid pandemic.
There were some indications of that rebound in Best Buy’s second quarter. Barry said the retailer’s computing category marked its sixth consecutive quarter of sales growth. It also recorded the highest number of second-quarter laptop unit sales in 15 years, she said.
Gaming in particular had stronger-than-expected sales in the quarter, thanks to the release of the Nintendo Switch 2, Barry said. The retailer capitalized on the highly anticipated launch by offering a way for customers to pre-order and opening stores at midnight when the gaming console dropped on June 5, so customers could line up and get it right away.
In the back half of the year, Barrie said Best Buy will try to rev up sales in slower categories like appliances and home theater by sharpening price points, adjusting the merchandise it sells and expanding the staffing devoted to them. The retailer has increasingly leaned on its vendor partners to staff stores, bringing in employees of Apple and Samsung for example, to support sales in different parts of its stores.
Barry said the retailer expects brands to ramp up those staffing contributions in the back half of the year.
Along with adding more dedicated brand experts to its stores, Best Buy has added new experiences to attract and engage customers. It’s testing mini-showrooms with Ikea that feature kitchen and laundry room appliances and merchandise from both retailers in 10 stores in Florida and Texas. It is also rolling out new experiences with Breville and SharkNinja to show off trendy coffeemakers, beauty items and more, Barry said. And it has areas in stores where shoppers can try out Ray-Ban and Oakley sunglasses with Meta AI technology.
For the Nintendo Switch 2 launch, Best Buy worked with Nintendo to double the space in stores ahead of the June launch. Nintendo also brought game trucks to select stores, physical trailers where customers could play with the new system and try out the latest videogames.
Best Buy’s fiscal second-quarter online sales in the U.S. rose 5.1% year over year and accounted for about a third of Best Buy’s total U.S. revenue in the quarter.
The FTSE 100 closed lower on Thursday, despite gains elsewhere in Europe, held back by a number of stocks trading ex-dividend.
The FTSE 100 index closed down 38.68 points, 0.4%, at 9,216.82. The FTSE 250 ended 60.63 points lower, 0.3%, at 21,744.40 and the AIM All-Share finished down 1.16 points, 0.2%, at 761.21.
On the FTSE 100, insurer Aviva topped the fallers, 3.1% lower as it traded ex-dividend, while LondonMetric Property, down 2.0% and Auto Trader, down 1.6%, also lost ground as they traded without entitlement to their payouts.
Among the risers was sports retailer JD Sports Fashion, up a further 2.8%, building on Wednesday’s gains which followed a well received trading update.
Berenberg raised its share price target to 155 pence from 128p.
“We believe that the 8.5x PE valuation fails to reflect the company’s potential for moderate growth, margin recovery and strong free cash flow,” the broker said in a research note.
In New York, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.3%, the S&P 500 was 0.1% lower, while the Nasdaq Composite was up 0.1%.
Nvidia was down 1.1% in New York at the time of the London close as concerns over China took some of the gloss off strong results and guidance.
The chip maker has not included any sales from China in its guidance as it grapples with the fallout from its trade war with the US.
Chief executive Jensen Huang said Nvidia is talking to the Trump administration about the “importance of American companies to be able to address the Chinese market”.
Data showed the US economy grew at a stronger pace than expected in the second quarter of the year.
According to the latest reading from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the US economy rose 3.3% quarter-on-quarter on an annualised basis in the three months to June, upwardly revised from the first estimate which showed 3.0% growth.
The first quarter saw the US economy shrink 0.5%.
The annualised calculation shows how much the economy would expand if that quarterly pace of growth continued for a whole year, according to the BEA.
Friday sees the release of the monthly personal consumption expenditures inflationary gauge. An acceleration in the annual growth rate of core PCE prices to 2.9% is expected for July, from 2.8% in June, according to consensus cited by FactSet.
The yield on the US 10-year Treasury was at 4.22%, trimmed from 4.26% on Wednesday. The yield on the US 30-year Treasury was 4.89%, narrowed from 4.91%.
The pound climbed to 1.3513 dollars late on Thursday afternoon in London, compared to 1.3469 at the equities close on Wednesday. The euro rose to 1.1668 dollars.
In Europe, the Cac 40 in Paris ended up 0.2%, while the Dax 40 in Frankfurt closed little changed.
Back in London, Drax fell 7.5% as it said the UK’s financial regulator had started a probe over the UK energy company’s sourcing for biomass pellets.
The Yorkshire-based power generator said it was notified on Tuesday that the Financial Conduct Authority has commenced an investigation into the company covering the period January 2022 to March 2024.
In a brief statement, Drax said the probe relates to certain historical statements regarding biomass sourcing and the compliance of Drax’s 2021, 2022 and 2023 annual reports with the listing rules and disclosure guidance and transparency rules.
Drax said it will co-operate with the FCA as part of their investigation.
In August 2024, Drax paid £25 million after industry regulator Ofgem found there was an absence of adequate data governance and controls in place that had contributed to the firm misreporting data in relation to the period April 2021 to March 2022.
Elsewhere, Hunting fell 2.9% as it reported increased revenue but lower profit in the first half of 2025 against a “volatile” market backdrop.
Looking ahead, Hunting said oil and gas demand has remained “steady and is likely to remain at a consistent level in the medium to long term”.
But in the near term, the geopolitical and macro-economic outlook remains “choppy”, it added.
PPHE Hotel shares sank 16% as the hotelier lowered full-year earnings guidance, alongside half year results.
The Amsterdam-based operator of Park Plaza and Art’otel hotels, among other brands, expects its full-year earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation to be “similar” to that of 2024.
A barrel of Brent traded at 67.51 dollars late Thursday afternoon, down slightly from 67.55 on Wednesday. Gold pushed higher to 3,407.04 dollars an ounce against 3,387.91 on Wednesday.
The biggest risers on the FTSE 100 were Anglo American, up 64.00 pence at 2,265.00p, JD Sports Fashion, up 2.74p at 100.10p, Weir, up 42.00p at 2,496.00p, Rio Tinto, up 67.00p at 4,637.00p and DCC, up 56.00p at 4,696.00p.
The biggest fallers on the FTSE 100 were Aviva, down 21.00p at 656.20p, Land Securities, down 12.50p at 559.00p, Endeavour Mining, down 52.00p at 2,492.00p, Relx, down 70.00p at 2,492.00p and LondonMetric Property, down 3.70p at 186.40p.
There are no major events scheduled in Friday’s local corporate calendar.
The global economic calendar on Friday has US personal consumption expenditures data, Canadian GDP numbers, German retail sales figures and CPI prints in France and Germany.
– Contributed by Alliance News
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