Closed Captions: Machine-Made or Touched by a Human?

Screenshot of a YouTube video with the words English (machine-generated) in the top-left corner

MACHINE-MADE CLOSED-CAPTION: After clicking the CC logo of a YouTube video, the words “English (auto-generated)” will appear in the top-left corner.

Here’s a quick way to find out if a YouTube video has been closed-captioned by a machine (typically pretty bad) or by a person (typically pretty good).

Click the “CC” logo on the bottom of the video.

If the words “English (auto-generated)” appear on the top-left corner, the video has a machine-generated closed-caption.

“English” means the closed-caption is available in English. Some videos contain two or more translations.

Videos that have been captioned by a machine (auto-generated) probably contain errors and omissions.

Screenshot of a YouTube image with the word English in the left corner indicating a human-made caption

HUMAN-MADE CLOSED-CAPTION: After clicking the CC logo of a YouTube video, the word “English” will appear in the top-left corner.

If the video is closed-captioned by a person, the word “English” will appear on the top-left corner of the video. Someone listened to the video and created the closed-captioning, or corrected the machine-made captioning.

Always check the accuracy of the video’s closed-captioning. Even humans make mistakes.