Amazon’s AI ‘Banana Fish’ Dubs Are Hilariously, Inexcusably Bad
Amazon’s AI ‘Banana Fish’ Dubs Are Hilariously, Inexcusably Bad
They are also AI dubbing show that already have a dub: https://xcancel.com/Pikagreg/status/1994654475089555599
isn't interpreting language the ONE thing LLMs are supposed to be good at? jesus
They’re pretty bad outside of English-Chinese actually.
Voice-to-voice is all relatively new, and it sucks if it’s not all integrated (eg feeding a voice model plain text so it loses the original tone, emotion, cadence and such).
And… honestly, the only models I can think of that'd be good at this are Chinese. Or Japanese finetunes of Chinese models. Amazon certainly has some stupid policy where they aren’t allowed to use them (even with zero security risk since they’re open weights).
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.
I mean, yeah, Amazon's relationship with Trump is far too cozy... however, in this case, I think it's more likely that Amazon was just trying to cheap out by using AI (and possibly test/showcase their use of the tech) rather than them actively deciding to cut out LGBTQ+ voice actors.
FTA:
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.
Had this decision been based in bigotry, I would imagine that they wouldn't have bothered with the dub at all.
Company like Amazon is huge. Like, the department to cozy up with administration is a completely different subsidiary than Prime Video anime importing. They don’t know to each other. They will cut each other’s throats if they are fighting for the same promotion.
This happens because 1) cost savings and 2) human garbage exist everywhere. They hide behind the decisions and use the current political climate to push their bigotry.
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?
But even allowing for those points, it's entirely possible that they did, in fact, do quality review. Extensively. But at some point the generation costs exceeded their allowed budget and this is what they settled on. This is the thing that lurks behind bad quality AI art; the fact that what we see is often the best result out of many, many tries. The Coca Cola holiday ad had to be stitched together from hours upon hours of failed attempts. Even the horrendously bad looking end product wasn't as bad as many of the failed outputs they got.
Regarding point 1, its a factored in value already. Replacing multiple stages of production simultaneously is a massive risk - voice acting + editing + editor review + production review on the cut.
This part:
it's entirely possible that they did, in fact, do quality review. Extensively. But at some point the generation costs exceeded their allowed budget and this is what they settled on.
I'd call entirely likely.
It would also mean that there was almost no testing of the llm's output prior to pushing it to production work, or basic items like intonation would have been called out.
Its also possible that the production team knew it was dogshit and pushed it out on purpose so people could see it for dogshit. Anime fans are not known for being supportive of poor adaptations after all, maybe they hoped for backlash? I know if I were on that team I'd prefer it.
At some point I'd expect management to have recognized it for being terrible though.
But quality control by humans, even by unpaid interns, would exceed the budget!
Hostly, even a dirt cheap language model (with sound input) would tell you it’s garbage. It could itemize problematic parts of the sub.
But they didn’t use that because this isn’t machine learning. Its Tech Bro AI.
This is what replacing workers with AI looks like.
Quality Control? Review? Pffftt, ain't nobody got time for that! just generate and ship, baby, generate and ship!
Think of all the yachts our glorious leader CEO will be able to afford with all the money we're saving 😍😍😍
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
Skipper. No. Please skipper. 😐
It feels like Neil Breen directed this dub.
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.