Microsoft Edge Will Soon Translate Audio or Video Subtitles Using Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence capabilities extend to every platform imaginable. Microsoft is of course no exception, as their AI assistant Copilot is powered by OpenAI’s ChatGPT (of which the company is a major investor). The company is now continuing to work on an AI-powered video translation feature for Microsoft Edge. It’s not out yet, but you can find it if you know where to look.
Twitter user Leopeva64 has been tracking the development of Microsoft’s artificial translation feature since October . It all started with a simple “Translate” button that didn’t really do anything, but Leopeva64 has since shared updates to the feature’s UI. In March, Leopeva64 reported that the feature would be able to create both audio and subtitles for translation. Four days ago , Leopeva64 announced that the video translation function would be powered by artificial intelligence (previously this function was simply called “Preview”). Yesterday, a user shared that Microsoft had added a toggle to enable or disable video translation:
Once this feature is running and the switch is turned on, you will be able to translate any compatible video into an accessible language of your choice and decide whether you want the output to be translated audio or subtitles. Leopeva64 tells me that the AI translation is currently still not working, meaning that the switch is just a placeholder. However, the fact that Microsoft continues to make changes to this in-development feature, as well as the decision to implement the toggle at this time, leads me to believe that this feature will be available to testers in the near future.
How to try AI translation in Edge when it’s ready
If you want to try to find this switch yourself, don’t open Edge on your Mac or PC. Instead, you’ll need to use the version of Edge that Microsoft uses to test new features: Edge Canary . According to Leopev64, Microsoft made this switch available to Edge Canary users on Monday, but again, I don’t see it in my version of Canary as of this writing. I believe Microsoft is slowly rolling it out to testers, so keep checking if you don’t see it either.
To check, open Edge Canary, then go to Settings > Languages . In the “Translation” section, you should find “Video Translation Suggestion on Support Sites [Preview]”. Click the switch if it is disabled. Once this feature is live, whenever you watch a video in Edge Canary, you should find a new option pop-up next to the Picture in Picture and Enhance options. Select the target language, then the language you want to translate into, and the function will do the rest.