this post was submitted on 24 Jan 2026

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Amazon Doubles Down on AI Dubs for Anime Despite Backlash: Creative Director Wanted (animecorner.me)

submitted 2 days ago by Crank@ani.social to c/anime@ani.social

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[–] Rottcodd@ani.social 25 points 2 days ago

I remain convinced that most of the problem with American distribution of anime is that the people in charge of it all too often know nothing about anime and have no interest in it.

[–] riskable@programming.dev 15 points 2 days ago (1 children)

They totally fucked this up. AI dubs "aren't there yet." They're still years away from being decent enough to get the job done.

If they really want to save money using AI, the correct way, with today's technology, is to use an AI voice changer! Hire a real voice actor and then make them do all the voices, then use the AI voice changer to make them sound like each character.

...but they're so fucking cheap and lazy they won't even do that.

[–] Unboxious@ani.social 15 points 2 days ago

I have to imagine it would be difficult to get a competent voice actor to agree to that, but I suppose even a semi-competent beginner desperate to get work would yield better results than we saw a few weeks ago.

[–] Unboxious@ani.social 11 points 2 days ago

Them delisting it after a day doesn't mean much. It's possible they had so many AI bros frothing at the mouth to help mix some slop in with existing good media they had to close applications.

[–] BoastfulDaedra@lemmynsfw.com 6 points 2 days ago

Sounds to me like they're backing up a bit. I get the concern-- we have loads of anime being made now. That's a good thing, as Hollywood dropped the ball and never bothered to pick it up again... I definitely understand the allure of automated translation.

They're going to find that it simply doesn't work, though. Need more human. LLMs have minimal (zero?) understanding of context; i don't care how many 6090s you give them! The subtitles i have seen, with Japanese as a second language, sometimes deviate wildly from what is actually literally said, too. They capture the emotional implications, not the specific wording.

[+] CsXGF8uzUAOh6fqV@lemmy.world -7 points 2 days ago (5 children)

I'm being half serious here: divine punishment for dub watchers :)

When choosing a dub over a sub you give up a lot just for the convenience of not having to deal with another language. It must be of no surprise that you can pull a lot more bullshit on dub watchers, including this AI nonsense.

Seiyuu's are celebrities in Japan. You couldn't replace them with AI because fans will not watch that shit if their beloved seiyuus are replaced. I think it would be a real riot to try remove Japanese seiyuu from anime. Maybe I'm ignorant but there seems to be no matching passion for english voice actors. Do they have many events, concerts, photo books, radio shows, merch and such?

Right now AI is not good enough to pull this off. If it is in the future, only the perceived value of the humans that are voicing the characters can save voice acting.

If you have interest in Japanese voice actors feel free to visit !seiyuu@ani.social.

[–] MoogleMaestro@lemmy.zip 2 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

They're also machine translating subs and, guess what, they suck just as hard

[–] CsXGF8uzUAOh6fqV@lemmy.world 1 points 6 hours ago

Of course. There are many human made subs that suck too. For example when Shikanoko came out the subs were quite bad but clearly human made. But the positive about subs is that you can still hear the original Japanese so you never have to trust or rely on them completely. I always take things from listening that are not in the sub. If I were just to read the sub I would miss many things. With dubs you don't have a choice, you just have to trust them. AI dubs would be even worse.

[–] AyuTsukasa@lemmy.zip 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

English voice actors go to cons and stuff all the time.

[–] CsXGF8uzUAOh6fqV@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

I see, I hope they have enough of a celebrity status among dub watchers then. I think that is really the thing that will shield them from being replaced by AI in the future.

[–] mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 day ago

I'm being half serious here: divine punishment for dub watchers :)

Piss. Off.

[–] Shipgirlboy@sh.itjust.works 8 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Well, now you've convinced me to watch dubs even harder.

[–] CsXGF8uzUAOh6fqV@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

That's fine. Do you watch subs if there is no dub? Some popular shows don't have English dubs. What about extra content? A lot of it is in Japanese only. If you watch that after watching a dub the voices don't match.

One time I was watching one of my favorites and an emotional scene came up. However the sub was not accurate and diminished the emotional impact. Luckily it was not a hard line and I could just hear the Japanese which saved it for me. I'm curious what you think of that. Because with a dub you wouldn't be able to spot the mistake right?

[–] Shipgirlboy@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I used to watch subs, back in the day, because there was no alternative. But nowadays there is so much dubbed anime at an at minimum decent quality that I don't have to watch subs at all. If a show I'm curious about has no dub I'll just watch something else. The popular ones all get a dub sooner rather than later anyways and I can't even watch all of those. The day only has twenty four hours and most of these hours I have to do something else anyways. Ain't got no time to watch all that. If by extra content you mean making offs and cast interviews and such, then no, I don't care about that at all. Special episodes I do watch, even if it's only a sub. And no, the different voices don't bother me at all, because usually they aren't that different anyway. Voice casting doesn't happen in a vacuum and the voice artists are selected to suit the character and to sound similar to the original voice, if possible. Doesn't always work out, but nothing's ever perfect.

with a dub you wouldn't be able to spot the mistake right?

No, because there wouldn't be one. Voice artists aren't some mindless drones who just read of some script in a booth somewhere with no idea or care what's it all about. There's also a direction and script supervision and things like that.
And, quite frankly, if a small translation error in a subtitle kicks you off balance just like that, I don't know what to tell you. That sounds like a you problem.

By the way, there's more spoken languages in the world than just Japanese and English.

[–] thejoker954@lemmy.world 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

For me dubs depend on the show. Some shows have good to great dubs others have shit dubs.

It also depends on when I'm watching a show - I'm not gonna switch to dub halfway through when shows that didn't have dubs when I started get them.

[–] CsXGF8uzUAOh6fqV@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It's not that a dub can't be good, but I don't understand how you can know if a dub is accurate. You would need to have the dub and the original side by side and watch line by line to see if it fits right? With a sub you have this automatically. Of course due to grammar it can be the next or previous line but generally you can listen to the original and read the sub at the same time to check for differences. I don't do this consciously but it is effective.

One time I was watching one of my favorites and an emotional scene came up. However the sub was not accurate and diminished the emotional impact. Luckily it was not a hard line and I could just hear the Japanese which saved it for me. If that happens with a dub, you wouldn't know. That is my problem with dubs, not if the voice acting is good or not. I'm sure there are many good voice actors in other languages that do a great job.

[–] thejoker954@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

It doesn't have to be 1 to 1 accuracy for me. All that matters is it makes sense for the scene / what's been going on. If I'm particularly concerned something is being lost in translation I will compare it with the subs.

For the most part I've noticed poor translation dubs on the 1st episode of shows so just write it off as a bad dub and fully move to original audio and sub's.