After a week of viral clips and outrage from anime fans and AI-haters alike, Amazon has taken down the AI-generated English dub for Banana Fish.
The embarrassingly bad dub of the action-packed yaoi was a first for Amazon and was labeled as an “AI Beta” in the series’ language options. Instead of hiring voice actors with all of Jeff Bezos’ fuck you money, Amazon uploaded an AI voice track that is monotone, weirdly mixed, and makes even the most exciting scenes sound like a boring text-to-speech demonstration. Anime is known for its dynamic voice performances, and this shit sounds like it barely gets above a whisper. Here’s a clip, and sorry for putting it somewhere you can hear it:
@animedomainx This is Back ngl 🥀 Amazon has started using Al to dub shows, and the first anime to receive an English Al dub is Banana Fish. Many voice actors are speaking out against Amazon’s decision, criticizing the use of Al and the fact that human voice actors were not compensated. Banana Fish is an action-packed crime thriller that follows a young, intelligent gang leader named Ash Lynx as he investigates a mysterious d_rug called “Banana Fish” while trying to protect a pure-hearted Japanese boy, Eiji Okumura, in the dangerous underworld of 1980s New York City Follow For Daily Anime News #BananaFish
♬ original sound – Anime DomainX | Anime News
After days of ridicule, Amazon has removed the fake English dub from its streaming services. Bullying works. Hire actors. Bezos has billions of dollars, and you’re telling me that man can’t afford to put someone in a booth?
As of this writing, the Spanish AI-generated dub is still available, but we’ll see if that lasts. The next question is, will Amazon continue to roll back this decision by releasing a proper English dub with real actors? God knows the company has the money to do it.
Anime isn’t the only industry that has started relying on generative AI to add voices to creative works. Video games like Arc Raiders have AI-generated voices, and rich people are lining up to tell you that replacing real voice actors with soulless droning machines is good, actually. A lot of AI apologia relies on the false notion that AI-generated content is good enough to replace human-made work, and if this is the best it has to offer, everyone will continue to rally against it.
