A Sword Art Online Fan Trained an AI to Dub the Anime and It’s Absolutely Hilarious

When it comes to dubbed anime, fans have their opinions on whether it does the medium justice. You can imagine how intense these debates get, but dubbed anime is becoming more and more prevalent these days. Still, there are some challenges when it comes to fast-tracking dubs, so one fan decided to see if they could train their computer to automatically dub anime.

And well, you can guess how the experiment is going so far. The tech might become useful in the coming years, but for now, fans can all have a laugh at how one AI decided to redub some key scenes from Sword Art Online.

The technology was brought to life by Afraid n Depwessesd on Youtube. The channel was inspired to do computer-learned dubs after seeing how prevalent deep fakes are becoming online. As artificial intelligence continues to grow, more learning programs are being made, and that is why this fan decided to apply such tech to Sword Art Online.

You can check out the video above for a full description of how machine learning was used to make this new dub. Essentially, the creator gathered some of the most popular anime dubs available and fed them through a learning program. The routine was able to teach the AI how best to dub an anime, and it was then let loose on Sword Art Online. And as you can see, there are a few kinks to work out.

This kind of software is certainly interesting and will likely be explored in the future. Still, the artistry behind voice acting and ADR direction is butchered by this process. The question of whether AI can totally synthesize art weighs heavily in this instance. But for now, it seems that debate is on standby as the tech isn’t quite able dub things just yet.

How do you rank this artificially made dub? Is it a yes or no for you? Share your thoughts with us in the comments section below or hit me up on Twitter @MeganPetersCB.