Companies are forced to learn the same lessons over and over again during the AI bubble. The backlash has been that companies have largely stopped doing stupid things with generative AI privately. It will be just as bad, if not worse, when they inevitably start doing it publicly.
Amazon just recently realized that getting yelled at is no fun. Last weekend, the company’s Prime Video streamer faced a flurry of public uproar when it quietly began rolling out a beta program that generates synthetic dubbing in both English and Spanish for some animated movies and series available on the platform. In general, aside from seriously detracting from the actual human performers and being the latest ammunition in the elitist culture war over the quality of dubbed and subtitled original anime, the dubbing was united by a singularity:
Thankfully, either the fact that they sucked ass or Prime Video was very tired of being yelled at by anime fans and voice actors (including) alike. evangelion Someone on the stream was listening to a story about voice-over actor Daman Mills, who previously made headlines for lashing out at the company that hired him to dub the role of Kaworu Nagisa in the Mecha Rebuild movie series. Some of the English AI dubs of anime. banana fish, No Game No Life Zeroetc. have now been removed, but at the time of writing Spanish equivalents still exist in some titles.
io9 has reached out to Amazon for comment on the rollout and sudden removal of the AI dubbing and will update this post when we hear back.
Amazon’s public embarrassment is the latest in a string of studios fretting over the fallout from injecting AI slop into their projects. Over the summer, a Wall Street Journal report claimed that Disney had blocked several attempts to incorporate generative AI into the production of both films. Tron: Ares And live action Moana However, a combination of copyright ownership concerns and concerns about the public relations nightmare if the use of the AI were made publicly available led to its withdrawal.
Despite that concern, Disney has also announced that it plans to significantly integrate generative AI capabilities into its streaming platform Disney+, with CEO Bob Iger recently telling shareholders that the company is working on plans to allow users to create their own generative AI content using Disney characters directly on the streamer. Perhaps they should look over Prime Video’s shoulder and take a hint before it gets beyond the planning stage?
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