A Korean AI dubbing startup walked into Cannes on October 11 with a pitch that stopped European media buyers mid-conversation: studio-grade voice replacement across more than 80 languages, delivered live for sports and in days for scripted catalogs. Hudson AI ran its demonstration behind closed doors at the Palais des Festivals the day before MIPCOM 2026 opened, and the European distributors in the room responded with a mix of skepticism and immediate commercial interest.
The stakes matter because Europe’s fragmented language map has long locked Korean content out of smaller markets. Poland alone carries roughly 300 pay-TV operators. Latvia counts about 70, and regulators there require Latvian audio alongside any Russian dub. Meanwhile, Western European ad-supported streaming revenue is projected to jump 76 percent, from $1.9 billion in 2026 to $3.4 billion in 2031.
The demo itself spanned drama, animation, and a live KBO baseball broadcast. CEO Shin Hyun-jin showed an English dub of a CJ ENM title, Pororo in Japanese, an Italian version of the film Charade, and real-time interpretation with her Korean rendered into Russian and Polish on the spot.
The European attendees tested the tool against their own business constraints. Inga Alika, who runs Alika Media and Tech in Riga, reviewed a dub that preserved an actor’s crying and called it “really very high quality.” Her immediate question: could Hudson handle Latvian? Martyna Dobrzańska, partnerships head at Warsaw’s Media Spurs, heard the Polish output and declared it “a really good Polish.” She said Polish operators refuse anything without a local-language version.
Hudson’s pitch shifted accordingly. Shin proposed ten-minute test dubs in Latvian and Polish. Dobrzańska committed to bringing the concept to Polish telcos and platforms. Alika pointed to NEM Dubrovnik in June as the gateway to Central and Eastern Europe.
It reflected a strategy adjustment for Hudson, which has focused on English, Spanish, and Portuguese through the Global K-FAST Alliance. The company says AI-dubbed catalog titles double watch time compared with subtitled versions, and localized thumbnails triple click-through rates. It did not disclose the measurement window or platforms.
Alika delivered the session’s sharpest line. If Hudson could generate Latvian and Russian versions simultaneously, she said, it would be a “game changer” for local channels that currently lose access when a dominant operator keeps localization for itself. The technology has shown it works. The next test is whether it works in languages most AI dubbing firms ignore.
