Prime Video Is Now Using AI to Make Dubbed Actors' Lips Match the Dialogue

Prime Video is now using AI to reshape actors' mouths so they match the English dub, instead of the other way round.

The first show to get it is Maxton Hall, the German romance series Amazon calls its most-watched international original.

Amazon announced it on 9 September 2026, and seasons one and two already stream worldwide with the lip-synced English version.

Season three arrives with it on 9 December 2026.

What Amazon Actually Changed

The voices are still human dubbing actors reading a translated script. The AI works on the picture, combining machine learning with visual effects to adjust each actor's lip movements until they line up with the English lines.

That goes after dubbing's oldest giveaway - a mouth still moving after the line has ended, or lips closed over a spoken word. Raf Soltanovich, Prime Video's vice president of technology, says the work happens "under creative oversight to ensure the integrity of their artistic vision is preserved."

Amazon built the tool in-house and says more titles will follow, but it has not named any, or said how much of the process is automated.

This Is Not Last Year's AI Dub

The difference matters, because Prime Video has been here before. In late 2025 it streamed AI-generated English dubs labelled "AI beta" on anime including Banana Fish, then pulled them within days after voice actors and fans tore into the results.

The National Association of Voice Actors called those dubs "AI slop" - our explainer on what AI slop is and why it matters covers why the label stuck. Maxton Hall keeps the paid voice cast and edits the faces instead.

Not everyone is sold on that either. One critic quoted by Slator pointed out that fitting a translation to the actors' mouths has been the translator's job in non-English-speaking countries for decades.

It is not the first visually dubbed title on the service. The Swedish film Watch the Skies, reworked by Flawless AI with its own cast re-recording their lines in English, reached Prime Video in the US in October 2025.

How to Watch the Original Performance

Coverage of the launch says only the English version is altered, and Amazon has not announced a switch to turn the lip-sync off. So if you want the performance as it was filmed, open the audio and subtitles menu during playback and pick German audio with English subtitles.

The same choice comes up with your own films. Our guide to the best media player for subtitles covers which players handle styled subtitles properly.

When a subtitle file drifts out of time or comes in the wrong language, Subtitle Edit can re-time it, translate it, or build one from the audio with Whisper speech recognition.

And if a downloaded film keeps opening in the dubbed language, MKVToolNix lets you mark the original audio track as the default without re-encoding anything.

Quick questions

The voices stay human - it is the mouths that now get edited.

Get Subtitle Edit if you would rather read subtitles than watch reshaped lips, or tell us whether you noticed the difference on Maxton Hall.