Tools that use artificial intelligence have come to change our lives… and even make us polyglots. We have all used Google Translate at some point to translate a single phrase or entire web pages. Then there were websites to transcribe audio to text. But what if an application was able to bring all this together and translate multimedia content in seconds? That’s exactly what Rask.ai does, an online platform that in recent weeks has gone viral thanks to its free trial.
Movie scenes, a television interview, a short TikTok video… Rask.ai can translate any video between some of its more than 130 available languages, dialects and accents. In addition, this service has the peculiarity that it can also clone the voice of the speaker, so it maintains the timbre of the people who are speaking at all times in the videos that it translates into other languages. A coup d’état that, for the luck or misfortune of the promoters of the application, has fallen into the favor of Internet users.
The results offered by Rask.ai have surprised social network users like X (formerly known as Twitter) who have not been able to resist taking advantage of it to create memes. And—it may be because we are very easy to please—seeing traditional characters like El Fary, Torrente or Belén Esteban speaking in English is very funny to us. But there is no silver lining and these memes have become the best advertising campaign for Rask.ai, with which it has increased its popularity and notoriety.
In fact, among the professional groups towards which this platform is trying to direct its services are content creators. Is there anything more powerful, in a globalized world like the one we live in, than being able to address your potential audience in any language? And not only in English! Swahili, Arabic, Romanian… If you think about it, using Rask.ai allows you to connect with people from all over the planet, even if you don’t know their language, but preserving the essence and personality of your voice. Artificial intelligence has achieved what Esperanto has not done.
Rask.ai wants to convince trainers, educators, journalists, and marketing or video game professionals that its translation tool is everything they need to boost and expand their business. In addition to translating videos, the application has other functionalities such as transcription of video to text, automatic subtitling or converting text to speech and vice versa. All this for a price of between 50 and 500 euros per month, depending on the minutes of automated voiceover contracted in each plan.
However, if there is a drawback to this service, it would be that the app is still unable to lip-synchronize the audio in the new language into which the video is being translated. In viral memes we can see how the pauses do not coincide with the movements of the mouth. Dubbing experts can remain calm, although for a short time, as it is a functionality that Rask.ai is improving and that its users will surely be able to enjoy in future updates.