Did something happen to YouTube subtitles in the past few months?

I’ve been watching YouTube with subtitles for years and while they’ve never been perfect I’ve started to notice some very strange issues with them recently which did not used to occur.

The most recent example I’ve seen was from a woodworking video where the word size was subtitled as “siiz”. I’ve also noticed things like random capitalization happening more often, like “sorry for not Uploading recently” or “thanks For watching”.

Are they using a new algorithm for auto-subtitles maybe?

  • geekzapoppin@lemm.eeEnglish
    2·
    11 months ago

    I don’t know if this is the reason, but they used to let regular users create subs. Now, they either have to be subs added by the original uploader or are auto-generated.

  • NoneYa@lemm.ee
    1·
    11 months ago

    I think a lot of YouTubers are now using AI. I have noticed things like “stake” being spelled as “steak”, same with “brake” to “break”. And also hearing words that definitely don’t belong but sound similar like “where” for “wear”.

    My guess is people are being lazy and having AI do the whole transcription but not taking the time to go back and fix the words that need to be fixed.