Amazon Prime Video has scaled back an experiment that created laughable anime dubs with generative AI.
In March, Amazon announced that its streaming service would start including “AI-aided dubbing on licensed movies and series that would not have been dubbed otherwise.” In late November, some AI-generated English and Spanish dubs of anime popped up, including dubs for the Banana Fish series and the movie No Game No Life: Zero. The dubs appear to be part of a beta launch, and users have been able to select “English (AI beta)” or “Spanish (AI beta)” as an audio language option in supported titles.
“Absolutely disrespectful”
Not everyone likes dubbed content. Some people insist on watching movies and shows in their original language to experience the media more authentically, with the passion and talent of the original actors. But you don’t need to be against dubs to see what’s wrong with the ones Prime Video tested.
In videos shared by users, some of the AI-generated voice work was eerily deadpan. In one telling video Ash Lynx from Banana Fish tries to awaken a child who has been shot while speaking in a detached, dry tone. “Don’t leave me please,” he states like a robot before confronting someone without any anger in his voice. The person responds in a similarly emotionless manner.
In addition to anime viewers complaining about the quality of the dubs, some expressed anger over voice actors being passed over in favor of subpar generative AI.
A viewer going by @AGESRings_on X commenting on the Banana Fish dub wrote:
[S]o many talented voice actors, and you can’t even bother to hire a couple to dub a season of a show??????????? absolutely disrespectful.
Naturally, anime voice actors took offense, too. Damian Mills, for instance, said via X that voicing a “notable queer-coded character like Kaworu” in three Evangelion movie dubs for Prime Video (in 2007, 2009, and 2012) “meant a lot, especially being queer myself.”
Mills, who also does voice acting for other anime, including One Piece (Tanaka) and Dragon Ball Super (Frieza) added, “… using AI to replace dub actors on #BananaFish? It’s insulting and I can’t support this. It’s insane to me. What’s worse is Banana Fish is an older property, so there was no urgency to get a dub created.”
Amazon also seems to have rethought its March statement announcing that it would use AI to dub content “that would not have been dubbed otherwise.” For example, in 2017, Sentai Filmworks released an English dub of No Game, No Life: Zero with human voice actors.
Some dubs pulled
On Tuesday, Gizmodo reported that “several of the English language AI dubs for anime such as Banana Fish, No Game No Life: Zero, and more have now been removed.” However, some AI-generated dubs remain as of this writing, including an English dub for the anime series Pet and a Spanish one for Banana Fish, Ars Technica has confirmed.
Amazon hasn’t commented on the AI-generated dubs or why it took some of them down.
All of this comes despite Amazon’s March announcement that the AI-generated dubs would use “human expertise” for “quality control.”
The sloppy dubbing of cherished anime titles is indicative of a lack of precision in the broader industry as companies seek to leverage generative AI to save time and money. Prime Video has already been criticized for using AI-generated movie summaries and posters this year. And this summer, anime streaming service Crunchyroll blamed bad AI-generated subtitles on an agreement “violation” by a “third-party vendor.”
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