United StatesMedia and entertainment2024 – ongoing

Warner Bros. Discovery

Caption AI workflow for Max

Warner Bros. Discovery says an AI captioning tool cuts caption costs by up to 50%

WorkingCompany's own claim

Problem

Captioning unscripted shows means turning speech into text from scratch, which is slow and costly when done by hand.

Approach

Warner Bros. Discovery and Google Cloud built an internal tool called caption AI on Google's Vertex AI platform for the Max streaming service. It first covers unscripted programming, and human transcribers still check the output for accuracy.

Results

up to 50%Reduction in captioning costs, as stated by the two companiesCompany's own claim[1]

up to 80%Less time to create new caption files, as stated by the two companiesCompany's own claim[1]

Takeaway

The company kept human review and began with shows that had no script to use for captions.

Sources

Warner Bros. Discovery partners with Google for AI-generated captions on 'Max' streaming service
CNBC (via NBC New York)24 Sep 2024News article

Source summaries

[1]CNBC (via NBC New York)24 Sep 2024

CNBC reports the launch of caption AI on Google's Vertex AI for the Max service, starting with unscripted shows. The cost and time savings are figures the companies gave.

Full details are in the original sources.

Added 25 Oct 2026 · Updated 25 Oct 2026