On one hand: It's impossible to dub every single anime at a reasonable time.

On the other: I totally see the big companies refusing to hire real actors for dubbing because 'muh profits'

The argument of "just watch subs" falls flat when they're using AI to do soulless subtitling too.

Jesus fuck I hate AI so much. The other day Google AI literally gaslit me. I remembered a joke I had heard in a movie but couldn't remember the movie title. Google used to be really good at this kinda thing so I Googled it. The results were wrong and the AI was like "It's Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates".

Now, I've never seen Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates so I knew that couldn't be the movie so I told it "no that's not it". And what did the AI do? Did it say "oh, well then maybe it's this?" Did it say it didn't know? No, it doubled down insisting it MUST be Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates.

I COMMANDED it to stop suggesting it was Mike and Dave because it was definitely not it and it STILL kept saying that was the movie.

So I asked ChatGPT. Yeah, I know it's another AI but I was at my wits end here and Google was undeniably wrong. Anyway, ChatGPT figured it out instantly.

So I went back to Google and was like, "ChatGPT figured it out. It was 'The Art of Racing in the Rain' you stupid AI."

Rather than admit it was wrong, Google then gaslit me saying I was misremembering the movie and that it was Mike and Dave Nerd Wedding Dates.

I was furious so I told Google to prove it to me. Then it got all vague like, "well, I searched my database and web records." I asked for the specific records. It gives me a link to the movie script for Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates on some website. I do a simple word search and do not find the joke anywhere in the script. Nothing even remotely close.

When I point this out to Google it was like" well, maybe it was adlibbed or not in that early version if the script, but it's in discussions of the movie so I know I'm right."

"Show me these discussions"

"Sorry, there are no discussions"

"So you hallucinated the whole thing and completely made it up?"

"Yes"

Fuck you, Google.

So if I understand correctly, they fire professional voice actors and replace them with grotesque AI voice bots. I hope there will be more fandubbing in the future

Honestly, the AI-driven subtitles are intolerable enough.

The sooner this AI bubble crashes and burns the better. If this trillion-dollar corporation can't keep up with the expected reputation... then it needs to stop claiming that's it's worth that much.

Voice acting is so incredibly disrespected, its not a surprise at all they'd try to replace it with this garbage.

Oh my god I fucking love these dubs.

It's so fucking bad.

I need more garbage like this in my life

I recently watched Last Samurai Standing from Netflix I think, which I actually thought was pretty good, but I noticed the English dub seemed to use some kind of AI to make the character mouth movements match the English dub words.

At first it wasnt too noticeable, and I thought they had maybe filmed in English. But there was a lot of things that seemed like maybe they had some native Japanese people on the team because English speakers would have either not known about it or would feel culturally compelled to change it. Then at some point I noticed it, the mouths moving unnaturally. I think it was a close up of someone talking, but once I noticed it, it was pretty distracting.

I honestly like the idea though. It might actually be a legitimate use case for "AI," as some people are distracted when character mouth movements don't match the words they say, but in this case I think it is still too early for deployment. It was done well enough to pass on people that can't see very well, but it was pretty distracting for me once I noticed it. It would be too much work to try and film all the actors saying languages they likely don't understand to try and composite. Is it mandatory? No, but it would be nice for people that get distracted by mismatched audio.

I can't seem to watch the example ATM, but I seem to be allergic to subs, so there are MANY shows that I would love to have even trash-quality dubs.

To all those working on Naruto fan dubs on the early 2000s I say:

I am sorry. I was too hard on you. It took me 20 years to realize what 'hot garbage " really is in the context of an anime dub.

So do they not even have internal review?

OK, so it gets generated. Just like if someone sent a real recording, someone should listen to it, right? And make mention if there's parts that are noisy, or theres a random change in eq that feels jarring, or... I don't know, because it sounds like an adult voice on a 6yr old reading the lines?

Wow. I watched some in the embeded tweet and that was uhhh... That was hot garbage...

Dont watch the tweet if you don't want spoilers, there are important story beats included cause they're scenes with a lot of emotion that the ai dub completely mangles

Highly recommend the show. Content warning for sexual abuse and exploitation though, its a central part of the story and the show is a very difficult watch

Posted this in another community but I’ll leave this here too:

So back when I worked at Amazon I was playing around with AWS Skillbuilder. They don’t pay for any other training materials for SDEs (well they used to have ACloudGuru but ended that).

I was like “they charge money for this so it can’t be that bad right?” Well

1/3 of the courses were actually what I’d call “watchable”

1/3 were just SEO Blogspam masquerading as information

And the remaining 1/3 clearly used a text to speech software that was dreadful. It was incomprehensible.

I say all this to say that if there was ever a list of companies I would trust to do AI Dubs Amazon would be the bottom of that list.

It's insulting because there are a lot of LGBTQ+ voice actors who want to do this but the powers that be won't greenlight it.

Look at Amazon's relationship with Trump, Trump's positions on LGBTQ+ people, and ask why Amazon is doing this. They aren't contractually obligated to do so. They are doing various animation projects and paying real voice actors. Though Hazbin Hotel is pretty gay, and so is Helluva Boss (same people/same universe). The only other animation project I know at Amazon is Mighty Nein, and I wanna say those guys are LGBTQ+ friendly but I'm not sure they're on the spectrum. So I don't wanna say Amazon is acting prejudicial here, but it smells.

isn't interpreting language the ONE thing LLMs are supposed to be good at? jesus