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Gokulnath B
December 19, 2023

AI-Enabled Closed Captioning: A Game-Changer for Customer Engagement

Summary

This article has provided a brief overview of the benefits of using AI captions for customer engagement.

Closed captioning is a powerful technique to improve accessibility, user engagement, and information retention during live events or business presentations. This, coupled with the video consumption trend, has led to a significant shift in the adoption of AI-powered closed captioning for customer engagement and other business purposes.  AI closed captioning creates captions using a combination of technologies such as computer vision and natural language processing (NLP) to analyze an image (objects, context, objects, actions, etc.) and describe it in more coherent phrases/sentences.  Businesses can use AI caption generators to caption images, videos, or audio, and they can be further trained for specialized use cases. In this post, we’ll explore the concept of AI-enabled closed captioning, its benefits, and how it helps in improving customer engagement. Let’s start!

Table of Contents:

What is Closed Captioning?

Closed captioning refers to the written depiction of what you hear in a video or live stream. Typically, closed captions are displayed as lines of text on the bottom of your screen that can be read alongside the vision.  AI-enabled closed captioning has several proven benefits that go far beyond accessibility. Among these include-
  • Help create better audience or customer engagement
  • Encourage higher average video watch time
  • Improve the overall user experience

How Does AI-Enabled Closed Captioning Work?

AI-enabled or automatic captions work by converting speech into text that reflects on the screen in real-time in the same language as the speech. Automated speech recognition, or ASR, is a type of artificial intelligence that is used here to produce these transcripts of spoken sentences. There are several AI-powered translation engines available to automatically translate captions that appear in different languages. It is also known as machine-translated captions or machine-translated subtitles. The process of AI-enabled closed captioning involves below steps in general: 
  • Preprocessing stage: This is the stage where all relevant features get extracted from the given input data. 
  • Encoding stage: During the encoding stage, various extracted features are encoded to be understood by the AI captioning model. 
  • Caption generation stage: This is the stage where a recurrent neural network or transformer-based model helps generate captions, using previous context, words, and training data so that each subsequent word is accurately predicted. 
  • Evaluation stage: In this stage, the generated closed captions are assessed for quality and accuracy in comparison to reference captions.
  • Fine-tuning stage: This is the final stage where the model can be refined or fine-tuned to improve and refine final outputs. 
Also Read: What is Closed Captioning? Everything You Need to Know About it

Benefits of AI-Enabled Closed Captioning

There are multiple reasons why it is recommended to use closed captioning in online content.  Some of these are listed below:

1. Increased Customer Engagement

While on-the-go or mobile video viewing is on an all-time rise, it can make it challenging for users to engage with content because of various factors. For instance, it may not be possible to watch a video with the sound on in a crowded or public place.  This is also why users today watch a maximum of online videos without sound. The downside of watching the videos on mute and without captions is the lost opportunity to communicate the brand’s message.  Videos with closed captioning, on the other hand, enjoy higher watch time overall with a 15% higher share rate as well.  Besides, using closed captioning in your videos can also improve your content’s searchability by top search engines, leading to improved SEO ranking of the brand. 

2. Higher Accessibility 

Online accessibility today is one of the most important areas for brands to focus on. Businesses across the board have the responsibility of ensuring that their marketing campaigns, as well as customer communications, are inclusive of diverse viewers.  Offering closed captioning for online content is one of the easiest ways to offer a more equitable and inclusive viewing experience to people with hearing impairments or other auditory processing disabilities.  Apart from this, captions can also prove valuable for users accessing online content in a non-native language and demonstrating your brand’s commitment to equity, diversity, and inclusion.

3. Compliance with Regulations

Several countries with strict regulations and laws in place require business content creators, broadcasters, and streaming platforms to offer closed captions and subtitles for their content.  Adhering to these regulations allows your business to comply with the required regulations and for legal compliance, as well as enables you to demonstrate a commitment towards inclusivity and accessibility. Apart from this, using AI-powered closed captioning your business can also benefit individuals who have difficulty understanding spoken language due to a range of reasons including cognitive disabilities, learning differences, or language barriers. It ensures that all users, regardless of their disabilities or language skills, can fully comprehend and enjoy the content.

4. Increased Video Watch Time

Another benefit of using closed captions for your business is that they can substantially increase your video watch time.  A recent study also found that captioned videos received as much as 40% more views than uncaptioned videos. It was also found in the same study that the chances of viewers to watch a video to completion are much higher when closed captions were available in the video. Besides the video autoplay feature being available on almost all platforms, it’s more important than ever to include closed captions on your video content. Also Read: Accessibility and the Need for Closed Captioning in Educational Videos

Conclusion

The adoption of AI-powered closed captioning reflects a strategic response to the growing trend of video consumption. Using technologies like computer vision and natural language processing (NLP), businesses can efficiently generate real-time captions, meeting the diverse needs of their audience. Hurix Digital can assist if you’re seeking a reputable close captioning service. To provide excellent closed captions and subtitles for any business, we employ the most recent automation technology, overseen by a team of professionals. Contact us for more info!