Latest news with #CosmicHorrorShow
Engadget
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Engadget
Crunchyroll blames third-party vendor for AI subtitle mess
At the start of last year, Crunchyroll President Rahul Purini told The Verge the company was "very focused on testing" generative AI tools for subtitling and captioning speech to text. The comment came just months after the streamer temporarily took down the debut episode of one of its newest shows, The Yuzuki Family's Four Sons, after people complained about poor subtitles. Much of the translation was nonsensical, with missing punctuation in many sentences. At the time, some fans speculated the company had used AI to translate the episode. Earlier this week, fresh accusations of AI use came up when an episode of new anime showed evidence ChatGPT was used to write the subtitles. Igor Bonifacic for Engadget On July 1, Bluesky user Pixel spotted an issue with the German subtitles for Necronomico and the Cosmic Horror Show , one of the new series Crunchyroll is streaming this anime season. Beyond a general sloppiness, one line began with the words "ChatGPT said..." during a pivotal scene in the show's debut episode. Engadget was able to independently verify the episode contains the AI-generated translation. If you're curious, the English subtitles aren't much better, as seen in the screenshots above and below. "We were made aware that AI-generated subtitles were employed by a third-party vendor, which is in violation of our agreement," a Crunchyroll spokesperson told Engadget. "We are investigating the matter and are working to rectify the error." People were understandably upset about the subtitles. Crunchyroll subscriptions start at $8 per month, and since its acquisition by Sony, service has been the dominant player in the anime streaming market outside of Japan. "This is not acceptable. How can we be expected to pay for a service that clearly doesn't care about the quality of its products?" wrote Pixel in their original post. As of the writing of this article, their post has been quoted more than 300 times and reposted by thousands of other people. Many fans say they're turning to torrented fansubs, calling the official AI-generated translations "unwatchable." People on Reddit have expressed similar frustrations. Ironically, when Purini revealed Crunchyroll was testing generative AI tools for subtitles, he said part of the motivation was to prevent piracy. He reasoned the tech would allow the company to start streaming new, translated anime episodes as close to their original Japanese release as possible, adding the lag between official releases was sometimes what pushed fans to torrent shows. Update 3:58PM ET: Added comment from Crunchyroll. Have a tip for Igor? You can reach him by email , on Bluesky or send a message to @Kodachrome.72 to chat confidentially on Signal.
The Verge
02-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Verge
Crunchyroll ran embarrassingly bad ChatGPT subtitles on its new anime series
The subtitles for one of Crunchyroll's newest anime series make it pretty clear that the company is going all in on ChatGPT. This week as viewers logged on to Crunchyroll to check out Studio Gokumi's Necronomico and the Cosmic Horror Show, many were surprised to see that the series' subtitles were filled with typos, grammatical errors, and explicit references to ChatGPT. The subtitles seemed very much like text that had been generated with AI and slapped onto Necronomico and the Cosmic Horror Show without first being reviewed and edited for accuracy. Errors in subtitles aren't unheard of, but sentences like 'Is gameorver. if you fall, you are out' are an entirely different kind of bad. And the fact that some of the subtitles literally start with 'ChatGPT said,' all but confirms that the text was generated with AI. Crunchyroll has been open about its desire to use AI as it focused on becoming more of a lifestyle brand. But this situation is decidedly at odds with Crunchyroll president Rahul Purini's past comments about the company having no plans to use AI to produce its programming. Speaking to Forbes back in April, Purini said that Crunchyroll was 'not considering AI in the creative process' out of a desire to maintain the authenticity of its series and films. Purini also stressed that Crunchyroll would not use AI in ways that would impact voice actors. But Purini said that the company was actively looking into ways that it could use AI to improve discoverability, recommendations, and personalization. Crunchyroll did not respond to our questions about how Necronomico and the Cosmic Horror Show's subtitles are produced and what sort of steps the company takes to prevent errors like this from making it into shows. Everything about this fiasco speaks to the important role that translators and localization teams play in producing quality art that's consumed by audiences across the role. This also highlights the pitfalls of the entertainment industry's rush to embrace generative AI while putting real peoples' jobs at risk. From Crunchyroll's perspective, using ChatGPT to churn out subtitles as quickly as possible might seem like a good idea in terms of making it easier to get shows streaming shortly after their Japanese debuts. But subtitles this poorly written make for a worse watching experience and are anything but 'authentic.'
Engadget
02-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Engadget
Crunchyroll's lazy AI subtitles have anime fans furious
At the start of last year, Crunchyroll President Rahul Purini told The Verge the company was "very focused on testing" generative AI tools for subtitling and captioning speech to text. The comment came just months after the streamer temporarily took down the debut episode of one of its newest shows, The Yuzuki Family's Four Sons, after people complained about poor subtitles. Much of the translation was nonsensical, with missing punctuation in many sentences. At the time, some fans speculated the company had used AI to translate the episode. Now there appears to be definitive proof Crunchyroll is using ChatGPT to translate new anime episodes, and the results are about as bad as you would expect. On July 1, Bluesky user Pixel spotted that the German subtitles for Necronomico and the Cosmic Horror Show , one of the new series Crunchyroll is streaming this anime season, read "ChatGPT said..." during a pivotal scene in the show's debut episode. Engadget was able to independently verify the episode contains the AI-generated translation. If you're curious, the English subtitles aren't much better, as seen in the screenshots above and below. Crunchyroll did not immediately respond to Engadget's comment request. People are understandably upset about the subtitles. Crunchyroll subscriptions start at $8 per month, and since its acquisition by Sony, the service is the dominant player outside of Japan. "This is not acceptable. How can we be expected to pay for a service that clearly doesn't care about the quality of its products?" wrote Pixel in their original post. As of the writing of this article, their post has been quoted more than 300 times and reposted by thousands of other people. Many fans say they're turning to torrented fansubs, calling the official AI-generated translations "unwatchable." Ironically, when Purini revealed Crunchyroll was testing generative AI tools for subtitles, he said part of the motivation was to prevent piracy. He reasoned the tech would allow the company to start streaming new, translated anime episodes as close to their original Japanese release as possible, adding the lag between official releases was sometimes what pushed fans to torrent shows.
