In 2019, I interpreted for the Mayor of Venice, Luigi Brugnaro, at the Sustainability Summit hosted by the Economist. So it was very surreal to recently watch a video of Brugnaro explaining a new tourist tax for visitors to Venice, while speaking in a broad New York accent, with the faintest twang of Italian.
Has Brugnaro become a fluent English speaker in the past five years? No, the video had been dubbed using AI. Hearing Brugnaro enunciating like Al Pacino in The Godfather was so bizarre.
People often ask if I worry about the impact of AI on my business as an interpreter, but it’s all about context.
If you need to translate a menu at a restaurant on holiday, for example, AI is a very useful tool. But in a professional setting such as a contract negotiation, where the stakes are so much higher, it would be risky to trust AI to capture the complex nuances of communication. A mistranslated phrase could be costly.
For in-person meetings and conferences, the warmth, expressiveness, and dynamism of a skilled interpreter also far surpass the current capabilities of AI.
AI might work better for dubbing a scripted advertisement recorded in a studio, but it feels a little… creepy to me.
It’s the ‘uncanny valley’ effect – that unsettling feeling we experience when encountering something that appears almost – but not quite – human.
That sense of unease detracts from the message Brugnaro is trying to communicate about his attempt to preserve Venice for future generations.
As AI-generated content becomes prevalent, I think we’ll all value the authenticity of human communication more than ever – especially in business. Do you agree?