Bullying Works: Amazon Pulls AI Anime Dubs After Intense Ridicule

Amazon has once again proven that, in the modern AI gold rush, companies are fully committed to making choices that they should have known everyone would hate and actively reject.

And yet!

This weekend, Prime Video rolled out a beta test of AI-generated English and Spanish dubs for several anime titles. They were immediately pummeled by the very predictable pitchfork-and-torch-carrying mob of fans, voice actors, and anyone with functioning ears, good taste, and a shred of human decency.

Amazon’s AI Anime Dub Experiment Backfired Spectacularly. Shocker.

The plan was to take anime films and series, slap on synthetic voices, and hope no one noticed the human talent missing. But they did notice, because the dubs were bad, and noticeably inhuman.

Voice actors publicly roasted Amazon for replacing the people whose work gives these shows their emotional oomph. Fans piled on. Humans should never be bullied, but we should absolutely batter and bruise and stuff and lockers every corporation under the sun because it works after the public outcry.

Amazon pulled several English AI dubs off the service entirely. Weirdly, though, a lot of the Spanish versions are still there. Amazon hasn’t released any details on its brief, disastrous foray into anime Robo voices.

Luckily, it seems the tide on AI is shifting slightly. I hope so, at least. People are finally seeing it for what it really is: a way for major multi-billion-dollar multinational corporations to maximize their own profits at our expense.

And not just by eliminating our jobs, but by ruining our culture by poisoning the well with this tidal wave of inauthentic, inhuman trash produced by machines, with the only human element being a sloppy prompt hastily typed by a talentless hack desperate to be considered an artist but never will be, at least not by anyone of real worth.

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