Netflix told shareholders in its 2025 Q4 letter released on January 20 that it is expanding the use of AI to “support our creative teams and advertisers.” It further confirmed that it’s using AI to “improve subtitle localization, making it easier for our titles to reach more viewers around the world.” You can read the full excerpt below.
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“We continue to harness AI to enhance the experience for our members, and we’re expanding these capabilities to support our creative teams and advertisers. In 2025, we began testing new AI tools to help advertisers create custom ads based on Netflix’s intellectual property, and we plan to build on this progress in 2026.
We also introduced automated workflows for ad concepts and used advanced AI models to streamline campaign planning, significantly speeding up these processes. In content production and promotion, we’re using AI to improve subtitle localization, making it easier for our titles to reach more viewers around the world. Additionally, we’re implementing AI-driven tools to help with merchandising, which improves our ability to connect members with the most relevant titles for them to watch.“
This follows Netflix’s rollout of AI dubs and hiring drives last year; Netflix began AI dubbing in select languages and put out job vacancies for research scientists experienced in generative speech technologies to “develop algorithms that power high-quality localization at scale.“
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It also follows Amazon’s controversial rollout of AI dubs, which it had trialed on live-actions starting in March 2025 before receiving heavy backlash from anime fans later that year. Fans and voice actors cited poor quality and the apparent decision to sideline an existing dub from Sentai Filmworks on No Game, No Life Zero. Also see Disney ‘Creative Supervisor’ To Explore AI-Supported Localization per New Job Listing for Disney’s AI hiring drives; Crunchyroll CEO Rahul Purini said in 2024 that the company was testing AI to streamline anime subtitling and closed captioning before saying in 2025 that it was not considering AI in “the creative process, including our voice actors.” It remains unclear whether this includes subtitles. iQIYI used AI dubs for the Chinese animated series Super Cube last year.
Netflix also confirmed in its report that it has 325 million paid memberships, and its watch hours increased 2% (or 1.5 billion hours) to 96 billion hours watched in H2 2025. It recently announced a major strategic partnership with anime studio MAPPA (Jujutsu Kaisen, Chainsaw Man) to co-develop merchandise and originals to stream exclusively on the platform.
Source: Netflix Fourth Quarter 2025 Earnings Interview (PDF)
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