Amazon’s Latest AI Experiment Is Setting A Dangerous Precedent

In the world of anime, the debate between “dub” and “sub” springs eternal. Purists mostly prefer subtitles, claiming that audio dubbing strips the story and its characters of personality or life. And sure, bad dubs abound for anime translated from their native Japanese — but there are just as many great dubs, performed by actors who’ve become the defining voice for iconic characters. Like any voice work, it’s an art form so long as it’s taken seriously, but even sitting through a bad dub is a small price to pay for accessibility. After all, there are a handful of beloved projects, like 2018’s Banana Fish, that are still without an official dub at all. The medium has potential to be great; studios just need to invest in the proper ways. No one wins when companies cut corners, as Amazon’s new AI initiative wasted no time proving over the holiday weekend.

In the race to compete with heavyweights like Crunchyroll, Amazon has quietly rolled out a new beta program that creates AI-generated English and Spanish dubs for anime. While not officially announced by the streamer, fans streaming select anime caught on pretty quickly, sharing clips from shows like Banana Fish and films like No Game No Life Zero. To no one’s surprise, Amazon’s AI-generated dubs sound pretty awful, with tonally disjointed and lackluster line deliveries robbing major moments of all their narrative weight. That said, the quality of the dub isn’t really the issue here: it’s easy to push back against AI-created work when it’s bad. But it won’t be bad forever, especially not with corporations so committed to improving their algorithms as soon as possible.

Even at its worst, AI dubs are replacing human voice actors, challenging the need for flesh-and-blood artists in a field that’s already bracingly competitive. At this stage, Amazon’s beta is nowhere near the quality that fans expect — but its mere existence is bafflingly good enough for the streamer to introduce, however subtly. Those who don’t know, or care about, the difference between a human dub and an AI-generated one will only further justify studios’ investment.

Amazon quickly rolled back its beta after plenty of backlash this weekend — most crucially from voice actors, who encouraged fans to cancel their Prime subscriptions — but the fact that the streamer found these dubs acceptable in the first place is more than enough cause for concern. Will Amazon stop trying to replace human artists with subpar tech, or is this just the first wave of a dangerous new precedent?

Amazon isn’t the only one attempting to integrate AI into its native streamer: Disney’s Bob Iger is also working to allow users to generate their own content on Disney+. Crunchyroll, meanwhile, is considering bringing AI-generated subtitles to its own platform. It’s a frustrating use of tech that’s nowhere near sophisticated enough to perform such major tasks, and a disheartening betrayal of the artists who’ve carried the medium for decades. The fight against these protocols is far from finished; even if studios are listening to the backlash, it’s hard to tell if they’ll actually learn from it.