Crunchyroll is one of the biggest anime streaming platforms worldwide, giving fans access to thousands of different anime series with more than 30,000 episodes available for streaming. If you’re an anime fan, that’s a lot of content to watch — something other streaming services like Netflix and Disney+ simply don’t offer. However, Crunchyroll has faced controversy, particularly concerning its subtitle practices in recent years.

In 2023, the platform temporarily removed the premiere episodes of The Yuzuki Family’s Four Sons after it faced backlash for its subtitles, which were sharply criticized for being poorly translated, with illogical sentences and bad punctuation throughout. It’s unclear whether Crunchyroll used AI for the subtitles, but many fans strongly suspected it did.

Now, nearly two years later, Crunchyroll faces renewed criticism over its subtitles. This time, the evidence suggesting it uses AI seems overwhelming. A Bluesky user named Pixel recently posted a picture showing the German subtitles for first episode of The Necronomico and the Cosmic Horror Show. In the image, the subtitle reads “ChatGPT said:” before the German translation, which seems to confirm Crunchyroll is using ChatGPT for some of its subtitles (via Engadget).

Pocket-lint tested this on the first episode of Necronomico and the Cosmic Horror Show and confirmed that the German subtitles did indeed include a reference to ChatGPT being used at the 19-minute mark. This only appears in the German translation, not in English or other languages. You can check it out in the image below.

Crunchyroll / Pocket-lint

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In the US, Crunchyroll offers three different subscription tiers: a fan tier costing $8 a month, a Mega Fan tier at $12 a month, and an Ultimate Fan tier for $16 a month.

Given how much fans are paying to access Crunchyroll’s anime library, they are understandably upset about finding poor subtitles in their favorite shows. Pixel, who originally posted on Bluesky about ChatGPT being in Crunchyroll’s subtitles, said, “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’s Bluesky post has received thousands of likes and reposts.

Users on Reddit are also complaining about Necronomico and the Cosmic Horror Show’s English subtitles, with one Redditor saying, “Is it just me, or are the subtitles so bad to the point I’m thinking this is 100% AI translated” and that the subtitles in the show are “so badly translated I have no idea the context of what the characters are saying as they just keep contradicting each other.”

Crunchyroll President Rahul Parini recently said in an interview with Forbes in April that “We are not considering AI in the creative process, including our voice actors.” Parini did say that Crunchyroll would utilize AI in other areas, such as recommendations and personalization, but didn’t mention translations, like he has in the past. At the time of writing, “ChatGPT said:” is still present in Necronomico and the Cosmic Horror Show’s German subtitles, and Crunchyroll has not publicly commented on the matter.

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