Crunchyroll: controversy over subtitles generated by Chatgpt

Anger rumbles in Crunchyroll subscribers, after the discovery of an anomaly in “Necronomico and the Cosmic Horror Show”. This new content, posted on July 1, in the catalog of the video streaming service specializing in anime, manga and other Asian content, confirmed doubts about the use of artificial intelligence on the platform … and not for the best.

In the original version subtitled in German in the series, a shell slipped at 19 minutes and 12 seconds from the first episode. Indeed, the subtitle of the dialogue is preceded by “Chatgpt Said:” (“Chatgpt says:”, in English), accidentally confirming that the famous generative IA chatbot of the American firm Openai was used for translation, as denounced various subscribers on social networks.

“It is unacceptable. How can we ask us to pay for a service that obviously does not care about the quality of its contents? ”Reacted a angry subscriber. Others also noted the poor quality of subtitles in English, but also in other languages, including French, pointing to translations visibly from an AI, without human rereading, full of bancal formulations and counters.

“We have been informed that subtitles generated by artificial intelligence have been used by an external service provider, which is a violation of our agreement,” a spokesperson for Crunchyroll said at the Specialized Engadget site. “We are investigating this case and working to correct this error,” he added.