Edge will give a little help to those who want to watch videos in languages they don’t master so well. Microsoft’s browser is preparing an automatic translation feature. In the Canary version of the browser, the button appears and gives four language options, but it still doesn’t work.
The discovery was shared on X (formerly Twitter) by user Leopeva64. When viewing a YouTube video, a small drop-down window appears. One option is already well-known: it’s the picture-in-picture mode, which opens a small drop-down window. The other is new: the “Translate” button.
Even though it doesn’t work yet, it’s already possible to see which languages should be the first languages supported: English, French, Spanish, and Russian.
Canary is the most up-to-date (and most unstable) of Microsoft Edge’s testing channels. In it, updates are daily, and things change faster. It also means that automatic translation of videos may take a while to be available to all users, as it must undergo further testing.
This type of technology is nothing new. The EzDubs extension, available for Google Chrome, is capable of translating videos, creating subtitles and even dubbing in the desired language. Putting it as a native feature of the browser, however, can help popularize it.
Microsft Edge bets on AI
Microsoft is one of the largest investors and partners in OpenAI, which created ChatGPT and Dall-E. For this reason, the Redmond giant has become a great enthusiast of artificial intelligence. Products like Bing and Microsoft 365 have gained tools that use this technology.
With Edge, it was no different. In February 2023, the browser gained AI features similar to those of ChatGPT and Bing, such as writing emails, answering questions, and summarizing web pages.
Microsoft bets a lot on Edge, and sometimes it even goes over the top in that support. In 2021, the company began trying to convince users to stay using the browser when they tried to download competitor Google Chrome.
Another similar practice happened in Windows 11. Soon after launch, changing the system’s default browser was a difficult task, which involved choosing the program that should open each extension from a huge list. Fortunately, Microsoft has made this process easy.