Thursday, December 04, 2025
Prime Video pulls eerily emotionless AI-generated anime dubs after complaints
Ars Technica: 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.
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4 comments:
I actually really don't see the issue with using AI for this sort of thing. Especially as it gets better. It might be cool to reproduce the accents for every character that was originally in the film. But have them be speaking a different language. This is one of the numerous ways that AI can be use to create a more connected world. By making media more accessible for all people. I personally have an issue with regular dubs. They seriously can mess up the look of films because some phrases translate longer. Or because some dubs will be terrible they won't match the characters correctly. This is a realistic use of AI that doesn't take people out of a job necessarily. That being said maybe those that work to dub will take a hit. But this seriously might be better for the audience. It's not actually making anything worse. It's making things better in this case. A rare case for AI.
I see both sides of this issue. When I’ve watched dubbed anime shows in the past, there have always been English and Japanese audio available. However, I can imagine that if I didn’t speak English or Japanese, my options for watching anime would be quite limited unless I watched subtitled shows. For this reason I can see how AI dubbing could be useful to expand the languages that dubbing is available in. However, I do agree that AI dubbing can undermine the talents that voice actors have spent years perfecting and take away a lot of the emotion of the characters. I think that if the AI were improved to convey more emotion, and was only used when human voice actors weren’t available to create a dub for a particular language, then AI dubbing could expand viewership of certain shows and could introduce audiences to a broader variety of media.
I think this is a good step. AI should not be replacing the talented voice actors that have dubbed many animes and shows for so long. Especially if fans are describing it as “emotionless,” it’s pretty much proving why it just won't work. AI doesn’t have real human emotions, it doesn’t understand what’s going on. So when it comes to scenes that require a lot of depth, it will be seen as disappointing to fans. When watching the clip linked in the article, I immediately understood what many others were talking about. Now I do think there is a plus to this. While AI should not replace current human voice actors, it can bring opportunity for viewers that speak languages not typically dubbed. In this instance, it wouldn’t be replacing voice actors and instead allow certain viewers to understand much more clearly what’s going on in the show they’re watching.
AI voiceovers and AI voices in general are one of the most disgusting things out there. They are so obviously not human and monotone, and gross, and it’s a little unfortunate that in their current form, they are being used to replace human voice actors (who are some of the most impressively talented people out there, because the things that voice actors do are literally amazing). I should probably admit that I am very strongly on the side of subtitles over watching dubbed stuff, but I have a feeling that the usage of AI voice actors will extend past “just in dubbed forms of media” and relatively quickly be shoved into all forms of voice acting. Relatively recently, on a niche corner of the internet I am in, I watched a big scandal about the usage of AI voiceovers to replace a human voice actor unfold, and it was really unfortunate to see people support the removal of creative human voice actors.
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