Amazon has removed its recent AI-generated English dubs for the anime Banana Fish and No Game, No Life after clips had gone viral this week, exposing their laughably poor quality.
Anime fans looking to sit down and enjoy the English dub for Banana Fish, Vinland Saga and No Game, No Life Zero on Amazon Prime Video were left disappointed the other day, as viewers discovered the dubs were AI-generated.
Clips from the shows went viral on X/Twitter, with fans lambasting the poor quality of the performances, which rarely matched the scene’s tone.
Following the backlash, the tech giant has quietly removed the English dubs for Banana Fish and No Game, No Life Zero, but has yet to issue a statement sharing why the company chose to use AI instead of hiring actual voice actors.
If you were planning on sitting down and seeing the dub for yourself, sadly (or thankfully?) you missed your chance. But if you’re still curious, brief clips have been shared online, giving you a quick glimpse into what a C-Suite executive might consider “Oscar-worthy”.
As user OtakuSpirit on Twitter would share, the AI would do such a poor job of translating No Game, No Life that it would frequently cut back to the Japanese dub, just to keep you on your toes, I suppose.
What stings even more is that fans have been waiting years for an English dub of Banana Fish, only to receive the lowest-effort rendition that could have been made.
As voice actor Daman Mills, who has worked on a number of projects for Amazon in the past, went on to say, “It’s disrespectful as hell. Was a queer trauma narrative handed to a machine because paying real actors is too hard?”
Mills would go on to say that he wouldn’t work for the company again if the AI-generated dubs remained on the site.
Thankfully, while fan backlash has prompted the tech conglomerate to remove them, there’s no guarantee it won’t happen again, once again raising the need for transparency labels around generative-AI use in media.
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