Amazon Used AI To Dub Banana Fish And It’s Disgusting
I remember happening upon an anime that changed my life a couple of years back.
Its name? Banana Fish.
I watched it in the original Japanese, with English subtitles.
The voice performances were stellar.
The story was gripping, heart wrenching, and dealt with heavy themes in a way that felt respectful but clear enough to warrant trigger warnings for anyone who had experienced the same kind of abuse as one of its main characters.
I remember leaving it feeling like my very heart had been ripped out of my chest.
It’s a Queer story, deeply romantic, tragic, but most of all…. human.
Any human being could watch this and find something in a character that they could relate to, or feel for, or crave, or cry over.
I was on twitter earlier and saw some voice actors posting about how Amazon Prime Video had debuted an English “dub” of Banana Fish… using AI generated voices.
I have not watched a single episode, and recommend that you don’t either.
Because it isn’t really about whether the voices sound good or not.
(according to people who have watched, the voices are awful, and, I mean, are we surpised?)
It’s because a brilliant, beautiful, human story has been twisted, perverted, and ruined by the use of generative AI voices because a greedy corporation didn’t want to pay actual voice actors.
An ironic connection, that’s definitely lost on Jeff Bezos, is that he’s bascially done to the anime and its fans, what powerful people did to one of the lead characters in Banana Fish.
He’s exploted, erased, and taken advantage of any human who worked on this art piece.
This is cartoonishly evil. As a voice actor, I’m sickened beyond belief.
Amazon is filthy rich.
That corporation makes more money than any of its top people could spend in twelve lifetimes, and its aim is to avoid paying human voice actors in order to save an amount of money that doesn’t even amount to a drop in the bucket of its profits.
This is sick. Greed at its highest, cruelest level.
Banana Fish is one of the most viscerally human experiences I’ve ever had the pleasure of witnessing.
To disgrace it by depriving it of human voices is an act of sacrilege.
Bezos and co simply don’t care.
Capitalism dictates that all things that don’t fill the grimy bald man’s pockets are worth bypassing.
We’ve lost so much already to the looming threat of AI in creative arts.
I realize that there will always be people who won’t care about how many humans were involved in the making of a thing as long as it provides them a precious dopamine hit.
There are lots of people who are fine with AI in their shows and films as long as it looks and sounds “good enough.”
There are lots of failed artists who have been resentful of artists who have found success through hard work and training.
People who haven’t put the work in have been so envious of people who went to art school, or trained their voices for years, and took acting classes, earning their way into the industry off of their hard work.
A lot of those people who never bothered to pour anything real or vulnerable into a piece of art see AI as their opportunity to skip the line and call themselves artists.
The line between capitalist and artist is all but gone.
The money people have found a way to directly cut the artist out by stealing their work, tweaking it slightly, and calling it their original work.
I’m not so naive as to say there isn’t an audience for AI slop.
The word, “art” being replaced with “content” was the death knell for artists, in retrospect.
So, fellow voice actors… how do we move forward from hearing depressing news like this?
I wish I knew.
But in the meantime, I am going to keep doing my work.
I’m going to keep spreading the word that what these corporations are doing to artists and beautiful works like Banana Fish is not something that I will ever bow to, use, support, or pay for.
I will publicly shame any and everyone who tells artists to “get used to it, because it’s only going to improve.”
Like…. fine.
My issue with AI was never how good it is, or how well it can copy human made art.
My issue has always been that its sole goal, is to attempt to make human artists obsolete.
The robot-voiced “dub” of Banana Fish would’ve been trash to me even if the voices were good.
It’s not about that.
It’s that damage is being done to actual human beings.
Whether it’s teaching audiences to become content with lower quality art and normalizing bogus AI slop, or stealing art from human artists..
(Because let’s be honest, calling what these companies are making, “AI” is a massive stretch. There’s nothing intelligent about what companies like ElevenLabs and Sora are doing. It’s machine learning. AI voices and things like it can only exist through analyzing, combining, and stealing voices that are already out there. It’s all being trained on your human creations. And you’re fooling yourself if you think they’re asking for consent. They’re not. It’s just theft. Plain and simple.)
AI is harming actual people.
The sheer amount of Queer voice actors who could’ve lent their voices to an English dub of Banana Fish, we lost those great, authentic VA performances to a soulless machine!
That is harmful to voice actors, voice acting as a medium, AND Queer fans of the show who would’ve loved to hear HUMAN voices telling a story they could relate to.
Since machine learning is being forced upon us at every turn, if you’re an enjoyer of art, you have to make a conscious effort to choose art that is made by human beings.
Late stage capitalism is trying its absolute hardest to make artistic career paths, a thing of the past.
To the doomers out there, know that while there’s a growing audience of people who don’t care about unethical AI usage… there’s also a growing audience of people who will only care more about protecting human work and human artists.
Also…. I could be wrong, but I predict that the lamest people will end up becoming associated with AI.
(Sort of like how all of the worst people you know like to say everything is “woke”)
On top of that, AI is already becoming annoyingly ubiquitous and we all know how market saturation works…
- Hayley Armstrong, Voice Actor
EDIT: It has come to my attention that the english “dub” has officially been removed and YES!!!! #TeamHuman
Here’s to paid opportunities for some beautiful human voice actors and directors. Looking forward to checking out the english dub that Banana Fish deserves!
Apparently the Spanish AI version is still up, which is unacceptable so the fight is not over. REMOVE THAT VERSION, TOO.
Gen Z Voice Actor Hayley Armstrong