Massimo Vimini knows what Italian audiences expect.

His platform, Serially, serves 630,000 registered users across Italy. Five FAST channels distributed through Samsung TV Plus, LG Channels, and other platforms. Content from the UK, Spain, France, Australia, Korea, Latin America, and beyond. 90% of the catalog is foreign.

All of it needs to arrive in Italian. Voiced by people who sound real.

Will Italian audiences accept AI voices?

Italy, like Germany, France, and Spain, has a deep tradition of dubbing. Audiences grew up hearing films and television performed by skilled voice actors. That expectation didn't disappear when streaming arrived.

"The quality is very high," Massimo explains. "So the audience is expecting always this type of quality. Even if it's a documentary and it's only a voiceover, you still need to be credible. People don't like to hear a mechanic voice or something that feels like AI."

It's not about convenience. It's about how people experience entertainment.

"When it's time to entertain yourself, I think people just want to relax. For us, the only way to relax is to watch the content in our language."

That's the tension facing every streaming platform in dubbing-culture markets: Italian audiences expect studio-quality voices, but traditional dubbing is expensive. It can't scale to localize 90% of a catalog. Something has to bend. Either the quality bar or the economics.

Serially chose a third path.

Can we build this capability in-house?

For scripted content like movies and TV series, Serially works with traditional dubbing studios. The quality bar is high, the craft is specialized, and the results meet audience expectations.

But for documentaries and unscripted content, Massimo saw an opportunity. A partnership with Spiegel TV brought WWII documentaries to the platform. Content that needed Italian voices but didn't require the full craft of lip-sync dubbing. His company already had a post-production team. They already had an editorial team checking translation accuracy. Why not build internal capability?

"Having already a post production team and an editorial team, of course it's something we could start introducing and test."

The decision wasn't about replacing studios. It was about expanding what Serially could offer, bringing more content to Italian audiences without the constraints of traditional dubbing timelines and costs.

"It's really cost effective, especially for documentaries, but also for unscripted content like reality shows or factual entertainment."

Will we lose creative control?

Some moments are genuinely difficult. Crime documentaries about accidents where families are grieving. Emotional interviews that need to feel authentic.

"That was very, very difficult."

Massimo is direct about what AI dubbing requires: human oversight. You can't just click and expect perfect results.

"You cannot just let it go and expect to have a perfect result without any human amendments. So we do a lot of amendments, which are making the difference at the end."

His team checks translations for accuracy. For historical documentaries, this is critical. You can't provide incorrect information about the Second World War. They shape voice selections to match content. They use workarounds for pronunciation issues and emotional delivery.

"The amendments and the tricks we use, maybe to do workarounds about pronunciations issues or other things, at the end bring really a credible result."

When standard tools don't achieve the right emotion, the team uses Voice Acting in Dubformer Studio. Think of it as voice directing through demonstration. You record the delivery you want with your own microphone, and the AI voice performs it your way.

"It uses your acting with the voice you've selected and produces exactly what you want. This is the final tool to solve pronunciation or emotion issues."

That's control. Not clicking buttons and hoping. Directing the performance until it's right.

What makes a voice trustable?

For documentary content, voice quality isn't just technical. It's emotional.

"A good voice is a clear voice, a trustable voice, and a comfortable voice that you can relax and enjoy the content."

The narrator voice matters most. "If you don't have a nice voice in a documentary it will be disturbing. You're probably not keen watching anymore if you don't have a voice that is making you comfortable and that you can trust."

For Serially's documentaries, the team found what they needed. "Inside Dubformer Studio there is a voice — more than one voice to be honest — that is perfect as a narrator."

But documentaries also feature interviews with ordinary people. Professors, military historians, experts who aren't performers. Those require different voices, ones that don't sound too polished.

"Sometimes the voices are overacting. You feel that it's a voice coming from a dubbing actor that has a specific way of talking for the dubbing. Which is not what you are expecting from an interview from a normal person."

"In this case the voices are too good to dub this kind of interviews."

Not all "good" voices work for all moments. Sometimes a voice can be too professional, too organized. Matching voices to content types is part of the craft his team has developed.

Will the team embrace this change?

The learning curve was real. "At the beginning was a little bit difficult to understand the way of using the voices, the way of doing some workarounds regarding accents or pronunciations."

Now, the team is confident.

"The team is happy experimenting with new technologies because we are going in that direction. The AI is going everywhere."

They see it as part of a broader shift. AI tools are appearing throughout post-production. Adobe Premiere. Photoshop. The whole workflow. Learning to work with AI dubbing fits naturally into how the industry is evolving.

Where does this lead?

Serially isn't standing still. While building dubbing capability for localized content, they're also expanding internationally through a parallel strategy: non-verbal content that transcends language entirely.

Short films selected specifically because they don't need translation.

"There is the power of the image in this case. It's amazing content that you can find in many festivals. A collection of beautiful short movies that will go everywhere."

They've partnered with WE Short for curation, building channels compliant with global cultural standards.

A fashion channel is launching, featuring catwalks from Italy's best brands. Two versions, one for Western markets and one for the Middle East. Food and luxury content will follow.

"Since we are in Italy and Italy is the country of food and fashion and luxury, cars, super cars and jewelry."

Five FAST channels are already live. Movies, comedy, history, true crime, and Italy's first dedicated weather channel.

And for localized content? Massimo sees the trajectory clearly.

"We think this will be the future. At some point we expect to start dubbing scripted content with AI. I think we are going to invest in that direction."

The quality isn't there yet for scripted content, not compared to Italy's traditional dubbing standards. But Serially is building capability, training their team, and preparing for what comes next.

A streaming platform that started with TV series is becoming something larger: a bridge between world content and Italian audiences, and between Italian culture and the world.

"We are trying to bring the best of our country outside to the world."

Massimo Vimini is COO and Co-founder of Serially. The platform launched in 2021 and serves 630,000 registered users across Italy.

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