In a podcast interview Decoder the president of Crunchyroll, Rahul Purinirevealed that the anime streaming service was experimenting with implementing AI-generated subtitles, something that was not very well received by the community.
Now we Crunchyroll Anime Awards 2024 O Polygon spoke with the president and COO of Crunchyroll, Gita Rebbapragadawhich clarified the use of AI by Crunchyroll.
Gita Rebbapragada stated:
We hear all of these concerns. The two things we are solving are: We want to provide a viable and meaningful alternative to piracy (and) we want to share the success with creators and our partners. When content is pirated, we are unable to share this success with them and this is something very important to us.
We have to analyze what technologies exist and how to offer the best experience to fans and the best ability to combat piracy. We are no different because many companies are exploiting this, and many pirate sites are exploiting this. Now, that being said, the anime is unique. It’s not like translating general entertainment. There’s a lot of references, there’s a lot of meaning, there’s a lot of subtext. And we use human translators, obviously, now, and I oversee the subtitling team, and they take incredible care to honor the creative intent behind the story. And this is something we take very seriously. It’s not something we take for granted. And this is an important value for us.
Rahul Purini clarified that Crunchyroll is not using AI in subtitling:
AI is new, we are curious to see what it can do, what it cannot do, to understand it better. Quality is of paramount importance to us, and if we find that the technology is not at the level that allows us to create the best captions we want for our fans, then we will wait until the technology gets there. And if you never get there, then you never get there.
Purini declined to comment on a timeline when asked about when and how the Crunchyroll can implement AI-generated subtitles:
We still don’t know if we will be able to achieve them. It’s a very, very early test so far.
