Research Insight | What Do International Consumers Think of AI-Translated Videos?
Global brands increasingly rely on short-form videos to communicate across languages and cultures. But adapting these videos for international markets has long been time-consuming and expensive. Now, AI tools such as HeyGen, Adobe Firefly, and InVideo AI are simplifying the process by automatically translating a speaker’s language, adjusting voice and speech style, and synchronizing lip movements to the translated audio. While this technology offers efficiency and scalability, an important question remains: how do consumers perceive AI-translated videos compared to those produced by humans?
In a Journal of International Marketing study, researchers conducted experiments in which (1) Indonesian consumers evaluated a marketing video translated from English to Indonesian using AI versus one recorded by a native Indonesian speaker, and (2) U.S. and U.K. consumers evaluated a video originally in Indonesian translated into English by AI versus one produced by a native English speaker. Across both studies, AI-translated videos were rated lower in naturality and accent neutrality than human-translated ones. However, in terms of language comprehension, AI performed better when translating into English—likely because English speech data are more extensively represented in AI training corpora. Despite these perceptual differences, viewers showed no difference in engagement intention (e.g., willingness to like, share, or comment) between AI and human translations.
These findings indicate that AI video translation can already support marketers seeking efficiency and message clarity, but it still falls short of fully replicating the natural and culturally fluent delivery achieved by human translators. For instance, a global fashion brand may use AI to quickly translate TikTok or Instagram videos across markets, while relying on native speakers to refine tone, phrasing, and delivery for culturally sensitive campaigns.
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What You Need to Know
- Use AI video translation strategically: AI tools can effectively improve message comprehension when translating into English, where training data are richer.
- Prioritize human translation for authenticity: Human translators may still produce more natural and native-sounding videos.
- Balance efficiency and quality: AI video translation offers speed and cost advantages, but marketers should test viewer perceptions before large-scale adoption.”
Abstract
Generative AI tools (e.g., HeyGen, Adobe Firefly, Invideo AI) now enable marketers to translate videos not only by converting language but also by adjusting speech style, voice, and lip movements. Following this advancement, this exploratory study examined differences in perceived translation quality between AI-translated and human-translated marketing videos in international contexts. Two between-subjects experiments were conducted, involving English-to-Indonesian translation (Study 1) and Indonesian-to-English translation (Study 2). AI translation consistently yielded lower perceived naturality and accent neutrality than human translation. For language comprehension, AI performed worse in Study 1 but better in Study 2, indicating that translation direction matters. However, despite the perceptual differences, the two translation methods did not affect customer engagement intention. This study offers early evidence on how consumers evaluate AI video translation and provides 12 directions for future research.
Risqo Wahid, Jiseon Han, Nizar Fauzan, and Heikki Karjaluoto, “Generative AI for Video Translation: Consumer Evaluation in International Markets,” Journal of International Marketing, 34 (1), 27–33. doi:10.1177/1069031X251404843