Prime Video Uses AI to Sync Actors' Lip Movements With Dubbing

On September 9, 2026, Amazon Prime Video announced the rollout of a new dubbing technology that uses artificial intelligence and visual effects to synchronize actors' lip movements with dubbed audio. The company calls the solution visual dubbing and presents it as a fix for the age-old problem faced by viewers of foreign productions: characters' mouths continuing to move long after the dialogue has ended.

How Visual Dubbing Works

The process starts with a traditional step: voice actors record dialogue in the target language, just as in classic dubbing. Only then does artificial intelligence enter the picture, scanning the original video frame by frame and placing invisible tracking points on the actor's face to follow the movement of the mouth.

Based on this, the system generates new mouth shapes synchronized with the recorded dub, which are then overlaid onto the original footage using visual effects. The end result is meant to look as though the actor had been speaking the viewer's language all along, without the mismatch between sound and image typical of dubbing.

Amazon stresses that the entire process is overseen by localization staff, who are tasked with preserving the original creators' artistic vision. The company did not specify how much work is required to generate synchronized footage for a single episode, nor how the cost compares with traditional dubbing.

Lip-sync creates a more seamless and immersive way for our customers to enjoy global content - Raf Soltanovich, vice president of technology, Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios

Maxton Hall as the Testing Ground

For the test, Amazon chose Maxton Hall, a German romance series the company describes as its most-watched international original. English-speaking viewers can already watch the first two seasons with the new synchronized dubbing, while the finale, a six-episode third season, is set to premiere on December 9, 2026, simultaneously in more than 240 countries and regions.

The choice of a title that's popular yet niche on a global scale was no accident: non-English-language productions are the ones that suffer most from the quality drop in traditional dubbing, while still having an audience large and loyal enough to justify investing in the new technology.

Building on an Earlier Pilot

This is not Amazon's first attempt at AI-assisted dubbing. An earlier, smaller-scale pilot program covered twelve licensed movies and series that previously had no dubbed version in certain countries, including the Spanish-language El Cid: La Leyenda and Mi Mamá Lora, as well as the American production Long Lost.

That project relied on a hybrid model: AI generated voices resembling the original actors, but localization specialists supervised the entire process, catching translation errors and mispronunciations. The new lip-sync technology goes a step further, since it alters not just the audio layer but the image itself.

Dubbing Industry Under Pressure

The rollout by one of the world's largest streaming platforms feeds into a broader dispute over the role of artificial intelligence in audiovisual production. Voice actors and dubbing studios have for months voiced concerns that AI tools could reduce demand for their work, even when, as with Prime Video, the voice recordings are still done by humans and AI only handles the visual layer.

Amazon is trying to get ahead of that criticism, stressing in its announcement that the technology supports rather than replaces creators' work. The company has not disclosed, however, whether or how it intends to compensate actors or dubbing studios for using their likenesses to generate new facial footage.

What It Means for Polish Viewers

In Poland, where voice-over narration (lektor) remains the dominant form of localizing foreign productions and full dubbing is mainly used for children's films and series, visual dubbing technology has no direct application for now. Amazon's announcement made no mention of plans to bring it to the Polish market or the Polish language.

In the longer run, though, the technology could affect how Polish viewers experience foreign productions available with English or Spanish dubbing on Prime Video, and it could become a reference point for domestic platforms and distributors weighing their own AI-driven localization efforts.