Bullying Works

Anime fans rarely unilaterally agree on anything. However, fans on Twitter were all outraged by the unveiling of the atrocious Prime Video's AI Beta. The product is a mess of generative AI that dubs anime with the stunted cadence of a run-of-the-mill text-to-speech program, and is somehow a product from a $2.5 trillion company.

Over Thanksgiving weekend, anime fans noticed that Prime Video quietly released new language tracks for Banana Fish and No Game No Life—two years-old anime that might not be uber popular in mainstream circles but are fondly remembered as formative series. Banana Fish in particular is known among fans for its explicit queer themes, having been based on a landmark shojo manga that deeply influenced how homosexuality is depicted in the genre. Getting an English dub for such a series should be like getting an early Christmas present. But that joy was misplaced: both shows were given an AI Beta English dub track that sucked worse than the most archaic dubs vs. subs detractor could ever imagine.

As you may imagine, people were pissed. Professional voice actors like Dragon Ball Super Frieza voice actor and English dub director Daman Mills raised hell about it. Even MoistCr1TiKaL donned his black t-shirt (that's when you know shit is dire) to jump in on calling the AI beta "unwatchable trash."

In a March blog post, the company touted itself as a "first-stop entertainment destination" while harping on the pesky language barriers that prevent customers from enjoying content from other regions of the world. Their solution was the same as the refrain of every tech company nowadays: AI. Or, more specifically, "AI-aided dubbing on licensed movies and series that would not have been dubbed otherwise." The program was released on March 5 in English and Latin American Spanish for 12 licensed movies and series, including foreign works such as José Pozo's 2003 animated film, El Cid: La Leyenda, Martín Musarra's 2016 drama Mi Mamá Lora, and Erik Bloomquist's mystery film, Long Lost. 

As a way to combat this distressing trend, anime fans warned those among us prone to hate watching not even to give Prime Video the satisfaction of an uptick in viewers and instead post that they wouldn't be renewing their paid Prime memberships. Prime memberships, mind you, cost $2.99 extra on top of a $14.99 membership to remove ads on their streaming service, and which also grant you one free Twitch prime sub. Prime Video's AI Beta was just a bow on top of years-old festering shit. 

Aftermath reached out for comment on the whole thing but Prime Video did not respond in time for publication.

However, the public shaming appears to have reached someone important.As on Monday morning, the feature was quietly removed, eliminating AI Beta English dub tracks for both anime. Nonetheless, as of writing, the Latin American Spanish AI Beta option remains available in the audio settings for these shows. 

To illustrate how much of a non-issue an official production of an English dub for Banana Fish—something not uncommon with anime, especially if they're newly licensed on a new streaming platform—would've run Prime Video roughly $125-$150 an hour per session, even through SAG-AFTRA Union rates. Basically, this is peanuts compared to what the show has already burned through on content mill-brained titles like Beast Games. But, like everything fueling the AI bubble, companies still compete to out unga bunga each other to make even better ways to boil the ocean to make shit no one wants. Prime Video didn't even opt for the tried and true method of asking for forgiveness instead of permission; Instead, they are apparently playing this nine-month initiative as an oopsie that it hopes will blow over while people flock to Cyber Monday deals. Time will tell if that cowardly gambit pays off, but history shows it has worked for other streamers, and we shouldn't let it continue.

Back in 2023, Netflix caught ire for listing AI as a creator in the credits for its WIT Studio anime, Dog and Boy. In a post from Netflix Japan (which Vice translated), the account characterized the whole deal as "As an experimental effort to help the anime industry, which has a labor shortage, we used image generation technology for the background images of all three-minute video cuts!” As Kotaku noted, a human creative likely had to handhold the AI to spit out whatever that film, which'll return to obscurity once you've finished this sentence. At the same time, animation freelancers continue to be paid a pittance. 

Likewise, that same year, Disney+ caught flak, however briefly, for Secret Invasion having an AI-generated opening sequence. Another example of a company oopsie daisying one too many times is Crunchyroll, who just this year, after months of reassuring gunshy fans that it had no plans to implement AI in any of its programming, was spotted by a user who saw ChatGPT explicitly written in the German subtitling of Necronomico and the Cosmic Horror Show—a show I've been told is decent but whose reputation will forever be entwined with ChatGPT even after the whole thing was rectified. Crunchyroll told Aftermath that the subtitles were the fault of a third-party vendor that was "in violation" of its agreement with the streamer, not a fault of Crunchyroll itself. Oh, also, users spotted Crunchyroll using AI in its subtitling again a week ago after partnering with Ollang, a Saudi Arabian localization company that uses "AI-powered subtitling and dubbing." 

All this to say, we can't just let companies like Prime Video get away with the wanton use of AI, only to sweep it under the rug, like pretending a mosquito bite never happened if you ignore the itch long enough. The only way these perpetual AI rake steps can have their legs cut out from under them is if fans show they care by being loud every time that artless slop rears its head. Let them sit in agony for their self-inflicted wound. Bullying works, folks. And the only way to keep art alive is to bully corpos and keep the pressure on.

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