banana fish anime mappa

Amazon’s Atrocious AI Anime Dubs Are a Dark Sign of Things to Come

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banana fish anime mappa

As generative AI content threatens to further encroach on the entertainment industry, animation – and specifically Japanese animation – has become a major battleground, as both sides of production and distribution weigh the value (and potential backlash) of using the technology. But over the weekend, a surprisingly serious new frontier opened up in that fight: the advent of AI-generated anime dubs.

Over the holidays in the United States, Prime Video launched the early stages of a new beta program that uses generative AI to voice the English and Latin American language dubs of several anime series in the streamer’s catalog, including the 2018 adaptation of Mappa. banana fish (which, somewhat controversially, had never before received an English-language dub) and 2017’s Madhouse no game no life Movies no game no life zeroWhile not officially announced by Amazon, unhappy anime fans took to social media to bring the rollout to people’s attention,

And for good reason, because the dub sounds (probably surprising to no one outside the AI ​​accelerationist sphere) absolutely awesome,

io9 has reached out to Prime Video for comment on the rollout of its AI dub beta and will update if we hear back from the streamer.

Even before you get to the translated scripts, these dubs are well below any sort of acceptable level. Tone, pacing, emotion (or rather, the apparent lack thereof): There has always been a brand of anime diehards who have long had a perception of dubbed anime as superior to the original Japanese work for a myriad of reasons and a legacy of poor quality in dubbing despite the leaps and bounds of improvements made in dubbing quality over the years as anime has only become more and more mainstream. And yet these AI dubs are somehow worse than even the lowest conceptions revealed.

Beta labeling or otherwise, it’s almost shocking that Amazon would consider it acceptable to take these live, regardless of how much or how little fanfare they made about the initiative. What’s even more shocking is that, in some cases, AI dubbing is being used on projects that have either been waiting years to dub, like banana fishOr, in some wild examples, have already received dubs that use actual humans – as in the case of no game no life zeroWhich was dubbed by Sentai Filmworks. In those cases, the AI ​​dub is not filling a void, but effectively erasing the past to try to turn a false vision of the future into reality.

With any hope, Amazon will look past the PR nightmare created by this “beta” and step back from trying to do more – every studio will now have to consider this as they try to move forward with public-facing generative AI content. But between Crunchyroll’s desire to experiment more and more with AI-translated subtitles and initiatives like this, it’s clear that some of the most persecuted professionals when it comes to exporting anime are facing being sidelined, quality being harmed – and regardless of how you feel about the quality of dubs and translations here and now, non-Japanese anime viewers are only going to be harmed if platforms force it on them in the race to the bottom. Will keep trying to implement.

Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.





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