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Crunchyroll caught in the act by subscribers
Beyond disappointed to find Necronomico and the Cosmic Horror Show’s subs on @crunchyroll.com are blatantly and openly ChatGPT.
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?
— Pixel (@pixeldoesthings.bsky.social)2025-07-01T18:10:35.620Z
In 2023, Crunchyroll had already withdrawn the first episodes of The Yuzuki Family’s Four Sons Because of criticism of subtitles. Fans spoke of sloppy translations, sentences without any sense and random punctuation. The use of AI has been suspected, but without evidence.
Several years later, suspicion turns into certainty. On Blue Sky, a user published a screenshot of German subtitles of the first episode of The Necronomico and the Cosmic Horror Show. The image clearly shows the mention “ChatGPT said :” Before the subtitles.
Pocket-Lint checked this information and, according to the media, the reference to Chatgpt appears in the 19th minute of the first episode. However, the mention remains specific to the German version and does not appear in English or in other available languages.
It is therefore an accidental confirmation that Chatgpt is used by Crunchyroll for certain translations.
The platform forgot to clean automatic generation metadata before publishing the subtitles. This revelation poses questions about the extent of the use of AI for translations on Crunchyroll and the lack of human supervision for automated content.
Anime fans are very sensitive to the fidelity of translations, hence this controversy in the face of this technology which also replaces the real workers
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