How IMAX Is Bringing Its Original Movie Content To The World With AI

Problem

IMAX knew that the global demand for non-English content had been surging.

However, traditional localization methods like human dubbing and subtitling have been historically costly, time-consuming, and difficult to scale.

As viewership of non-English films and documentaries climbed for IMAX, especially in markets like the U.S., U.K., Australia, and Canada, IMAX had limited ability to rapidly translate its original content while preserving the emotional integrity of performances. 

As a result, this created a barrier to reaching diverse audiences and hindered the company’s goal of simultaneous worldwide releases, which was a big deal for them.

Solution

To address these challenges, IMAX partnered with Camb AI (that's us) to deploy our DubStudio platform, which leverages two AI voice generation models:

• Boli (Speech-to-Text Translation): Processes input speech and outputs translated text tokens to retain linguistic nuances.
• Mars (Speech Emulation): Converts translated text back into speech using the original audio’s performance characteristics (including the tone, ambient noise, and background score).

Our DubStudio was able to handle high- and low-resource languages alike (140+ languages), which helped IMAX localize documentaries and other original content into dozens of languages that historically lacked affordable dubbing options.

Initially, IMAX began with high-resource languages to validate quality and cost savings, then plans to expand to additional languages over time.

Camb AI’s pipeline has been able to deliver translations in up to ten languages at once, with roughly 20-30 seconds of latency (well within standard streaming and broadcast delays).

Results

Although IMAX’s partnership with us is still in its early stages, initial internal testing from them has demonstrated that:

• DubStudio’s Boli and Mars models were able to capture and reproduce emotional nuances, such as ambient audience reactions.
• Our AI-powered voice generation solution has helped them reduce costs by avoiding traditional dubbing studios. 
• They can localize their content faster than their competitors and remain competitive with non-English speakers.

With Camb AI's support for 140 languages, IMAX can now able to consider simultaneous or near-simultaneous global releases to make premium content accessible to underserved communities.

Going forward, IMAX told us that they plan to continue rolling out AI-based translations in stages, beginning with widely spoken languages. 

As our partnership deepens, they anticipate broader deployment across its entire slate of original content with the final goal of democratizing access to blockbuster cinematic experiences worldwide.