Aux origines de SyncWords : IA et avenir

Entretien entre Ashish Shah, cofondateur de SyncWords, et Maree Moscatti, directrice générale de CopyTalk : 

Le cofondateur et directeur de la stratégie de SyncWords s'est entretenu avec Maree Moscatti, directrice générale de CopyTalk au sujet de leur partenariat historique, de l'histoire de SyncWords et de ses innovations dans le sous-titrage et la localisation. Dans ce workflow, CopyTalk transcrivait les médias de ses clients et SyncWords créait automatiquement les sous-titres et traductions destinés à la diffusion en ligne, en appliquant les protocoles de sécurité prévus.

Maree: Vous avez cofondé SyncWords en 2012 après une carrière dans l'analyse financière, puis comme responsable du développement commercial d'une entreprise de technologie et de conception spécialisée dans les applications web. Pouvez-vous nous raconter le parcours qui vous a conduit à cofonder SyncWords et expliquer comment ces expériences ont nourri votre volonté de créer cette entreprise ?

Ashish: They say life prepares you for the challenges ahead. It was my good fortune that I met some incredible people who became business partners as we co-founded SyncWords, and created a company culture of innovation, inclusion, and open communication. My experience in equity research taught me putting customers first, as well as business analysis, which are important aspects as we continue to grow SyncWords and use its technology in meaningful ways for a diverse range of customers, including accessibility for the deaf and hard-of-hearing. We are using our core technologies and AI for localization through subtitling and automated dubbing via voice synthesis.

Further, having a team with a background in developing web applications has served SyncWords really well as we create awesomely designed applications that use our artificial intelligence and machine learning expertise.

Maree: Qu'est-ce qui vous a d'abord attiré dans le domaine du sous-titrage et des sous-titres codés ?

Ashish: From the onset, all the partners had a deep commitment to accessibility. In fact, we had already been working on media accessibility for the deaf and hard of hearing since 2000. And beyond that we considered language translation via foreign language subtitles to be the way forward to make video content globally accessible. This coupled with the growing supply of video and streaming services, like Netflix and Hulu, powered the significant growth of SyncWords in the last decade.


We realized that the old way of closed captioning and subtitling was based on human-intensive effort, and arcane and pricey desktop tools. The captioning process took a long time, and the prices of producing captions and subtitles were very high, thus leaving out mainstream video producers from using these services, so solving that problem became a priority for SyncWords.

Maree: L'intelligence artificielle et l'automatisation évoluent constamment. De quelles manières les progrès de ces technologies ont-ils transformé le modèle économique de SyncWords depuis sa création, notamment les services proposés aux clients ?

Ashish: SyncWords’ core technologies are powered using its proprietary Machine Learning technology and infrastructure. Using Artificial Intelligence in combination with our automation and tools has reduced the time to generate captions and subtitles from a few days to just a few minutes. This hybrid approach of “automation plus tools” has helped our customers immensely and increased their output of captions in a significant way. Our automation and AI were built around processes and stringent quality requirements demanded by the broadcast industry, which enabled SyncWords to set itself apart from other providers.

While we develop several core components of AI within SyncWords, we also believe in using best-of-breed machine learning where it’s applicable and produces a useful end product. We have integrated SyncWords with the leading AI providers like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft in certain areas.

SyncWords’ services are a perfect extension for Copytalk’s customers who are requiring global communications, security, and quality. Copytalk’s transcription workflow is integrated with SyncWords’ captioning platform to offer its customers high quality captions and subtitles.

Maree: Pour finir, quelle est, à ce jour, votre plus grande fierté en tant que cofondateur de SyncWords ?

Ashish: While we are proud of many achievements at SyncWords, some notable ones include launching the first human-like dubbing platform called Vocalics. This was our moonshot idea. Hearing people speak in a new language with the same style and emotions is powerful, and we think it heralds a new age in communications. With its patent-pending technology, Vocalics is going to be a huge disruptor, so stay tuned!