CES 2025: VLC Media Player Unveils AI-Powered Subtitles and Translation That Work Offline
Media player VLC was one of the surprise exhibitors at CES 2025, and the company is showing off a feature that automatically generates subtitles for you. When I see companies launching new AI features, I’m usually skeptical because it’s become an overused buzzword, but in this case it actually seems useful.
VideoLAN, the parent organization of the VLC media player, says it uses open-source artificial intelligence models to implement automatic subtitles in its media player. There are two levels here: the first is the creation of the subtitles themselves, and the second is the translation. In the CES demo, you can see VLC media player playing videos with subtitles in several different languages. There is currently no word on when this feature will be available, but I really like the fact that translation is supported as it will make the videos more accessible to non-English speaking people.
In a video uploaded to X , VideoLAN president Jean-Baptiste Kempf said that the AI-powered subtitle generation function works completely offline. This is encouraging to hear, as AI tools are often criticized for violating your privacy , using your data without consent, and for having extremely high energy consumption in data centers.
Even though streaming services are widely used in the world to play videos, there is still a large market for media player applications such as VLC media player. According to Kempf , the VLC media player has surpassed 6 billion downloads. His LinkedIn post states: “The number of active VLC users is actually growing, even in the era of streaming services. Let’s see how much it continues to grow!” There are better designed alternatives , but VLC media player has retained its place on every computer I’ve used. It still plays almost any video file I throw at it, and has plenty of hidden features for those who want to dig deeper.