As giant tech corporations try to jam AI into every possible orifice in the world, we are consistently getting new examples day in and day out of that going poorly. This week, that’s Amazon Prime Video introducing dubs to the beloved anime Banana Fish, which has needed them for a long while. The problem? They’re AI. Not just AI, horrible AI.
You can check out some of these examples below. The intonation and line reading (“reading”) make Siri look like Meryl Streep. It is technically the English language, but that’s about it, and it has outraged both fans of Banana Fish, but really of all anime, and just those who respect voice acting in general.
The idea here that Amazon saving the estimated $75 an hour it would have to pay voice actors, something like $50,000 for the show in total, when it’s a trillion-dollar corporation feels gross. But to do so when it’s just so offensively, obviously bad is even worse. Here’s a viral tweet from voice actor/dub maker Daman Mills, which went viral on Twitter with 47,000 likes and 3.3 million views.
“Shame on you @amazon @PrimeVideo. After years of fans hoping for an English dub of Banana Fish, you give it to us as AI generated garbage?
It’s disrespectful as hell. Was a queer trauma narrative handed to a machine because paying real actors is too hard? Fix this, or I personally will not work with you as an actor EVER AGAIN on any of your dubs. This is not ‘the future.’ This is erasure.”
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This is not the first time Amazon has done something like this. It has been attempting this feature under the radar for a while now. Back in February, Amazon Prime dubbed the Portuguese of O Silêncio de Marcos Tremmer and the result is…
Banana Fish, however, is a much more widely known series, and that has sparked the widespread backlash to the move. Despite the fact that there is always pro and anti-AI sparring for things like this, the end result is so bad that even if you think AI could do voicework on projects, it is difficult to say this end result is in anyone’s best interest.
The answer, of course, is what many anime fans would say, don’t watch dubs, watch the original with subtitles. I mean, sure, but that’s not really the point here, and you can see where these corporations are attempting to steer things. Sure, this is $75 an hour an actor, but hey, wait, what if we do this with literally every dub we do, and suddenly that’s 10,000 actors? That is no doubt the goal here if this trial pans out. Needless to say, however, it is not, in fact, panning out.
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Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2025/11/30/amazons-ai-banana-fish-dubs-are-hilariously-inexcusably-bad/
