Dubformer, a leading AI dubbing startup, introduced Emotion Transfer, a groundbreaking AI technology designed to enhance the emotional expressiveness of voiceovers in dubbing. Unlike traditional solutions, Emotion Transfer replicates the emotional dynamics of speech—such as pitch, volume, and speed—while maintaining natural-sounding dubbing across languages.
Despite advancements in AI dubbing, capturing authentic emotional expression has been a persistent hurdle. Existing methods, often reliant on voice cloning or pre-recorded voices, struggle to replicate the emotional depth of original performances, leading to flat and unengaging results.
Dubformer’s Emotion Transfer addresses this challenge by focusing on transferring emotions and intonations rather than replicating voice and timbre. This approach allows for highly expressive voiceovers, crucial for emotionally engaging content such as TV shows, animated series, and films.
Emotion Transfer has the potential to transform the dubbing industry by enabling the transfer of emotional essence across different voices without cloning the actor’s original voice. This innovation is particularly significant amid growing legal and ethical concerns over voice cloning technology, which has raised issues of unauthorized use of voice actor data.
Emotion Transfer captures and processes the emotional aspects of speech—pitch, volume, and speed—while separating them from the unique timbre of individual voices. The system uses the original performance as a reference to emulate its emotional essence, a method akin to the techniques employed by professional dubbing actors.
Unlike earlier AI dubbing methods, such as text-to-speech and voice cloning, Emotion Transfer focuses solely on emotional dynamics, avoiding the risks of voice misuse. The technology supports translations in 20 languages into English, German, Spanish, and French.
“AI dubbing has struggled to replicate the emotional nuances of human performances," commented Dubformer CEO and Founder, Anton Dvorkovich. "Emotion Transfer marks a leap forward by focusing on the emotions behind each phrase, creating a more engaging and faithful dubbing experience.”
Founded in September 2023 by Anton Dvorkovich, former Head of NLP & Speech at Yandex, Dubformer builds on a decade of expertise in machine translation and speech technologies. The core team previously launched Yandex Video Translation, a leading AI dubbing solution with millions of daily users.
Dubformer has experienced rapid growth, achieving a fourfold increase in quarter-over-quarter revenue and a 50% month-over-month growth rate over the past six months. The company serves over 200 clients across the U.S. and Europe, including NBC Universal, Telemundo, and Little Dot Studios, among others.
Dubformer also collaborates with partners such as VOXX, Amberscript, and Collot Baca. Its open platform allows creators and users worldwide to access Emotion Transfer technology.
