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How radically will AI change Anime within 5 years?


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InfiniteJest



Joined: 22 Apr 2023
Posts: 136
PostPosted: Wed May 10, 2023 9:47 pm Reply with quote
Many different professions and industries will undergo a sea change with AI automating what is done and it won't always be pretty.

But one area that is interesting came up during a recent systems strategy meeting at work. It's not ready for prime time yet, but our translation services was identified as something could be automated out of existence within about 3 years. That's because computer translation is moving ahead that fast.

Made me wonder about anime. We now have deep fake tech that can basically mimic most voices and words (among other things). And I'm sure that a company like Sony has their eyes on a quicker, cheaper way of dubbing out their shows in multiple languages.

I just looked and some youtube hobbyists are already doing very crude AI dubbing (mostly for laughs) but with the industry changing this fast, it's hard to think that the money won't push the tech in this direction.

So I'm curious for any of you out there, what's your prediction on how AI will change anime in the next 5 years? My prediction is that dubbing will become a high priority and we'll see it done quick and fast to the point that the whole sub/dub debate will transform. This same tech will change sub too...anyone who's used transcription services on Zoom has already seen how fast some of it can be...accuracy is still being worked on but the heuristics are improving daily.

In 5 years, people won't wait for years/months/weeks for the dubbed version to come out. The dubbed version will be something that pops out as an audio option same day and it will be in all mainstream languages. I understand that the AI is already learning to mimic the voice tones of the original actors so instead of odd English accents...we'll have English but in the original Japanese voice? How very running man of it all.

Anyway, that's the interesting thoughts I had during my recent meeting. No one else on the call suspected I'd be trying to apply it to anime.

So what's your bet on what changes in the semi-near future?
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sharkticon



Joined: 19 Jul 2011
Posts: 30
PostPosted: Thu May 11, 2023 1:02 am Reply with quote
Honest answer, also coming from someone who works in a field where we will be using AI -

It won't.

LLMs struggle with creativity. In many ways, they are incapable of it. They can only rehash things that have been done before. You can only use it to produce the most generic stories, and it will often plagiarize. Additionally, LLM and machine learning based translations consistently struggle with intention and slang.

Even if those hurdles are cleared, the fact anything machine generated cannot be copyrighted is sort of a death knell for most creative industry use.
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Blood-
Bargain Hunter



Joined: 07 Mar 2009
Posts: 23781
PostPosted: Thu May 11, 2023 5:38 am Reply with quote
@ sharkticon - I sincerely hope you are right. I work in the content production business and my boss thinks our company will be toast in five years. For myself, I've stopped making predictions where AI is concerned. It just moves too fast. Frankly, I think the only jobs that will be truly safe at some point will be the AI whisperers. What AI doesn't take over, robots will, but thankfully robo tech (heh) is lagging behind AI advances so far.

I used to think that the ultimate pinnacle in entertainment would be if tech ever advanced to the point where (perhaps by "jacking in" or whatever) a device was able to create an experience that was indistinguishable from reality to the experiencer: fully convincing visual, audio, tactile, sense of smell, the whole works. I don't know if we'll ever get there.

What I didn't predict and where we are already headed at the speed of light is "make it yourself" content where you'll just have to give a few voice prompts, "Hey, Siri, I'd like to see a 90-minute action movie with Bruce Willis, Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt and Marvin the Martian where they go to Albania to pull off a jewel heist, etc, etc, etc" and bam! There you go.

Of course, my movie would more likely involve me, some TikTok hunnies and a big vat of Mazola oil...
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Alan45
Village Elder



Joined: 25 Aug 2010
Posts: 9844
Location: Virginia
PostPosted: Thu May 11, 2023 7:33 am Reply with quote
InfiniteJest wrote:
Quote:
n 5 years, people won't wait for years/months/weeks for the dubbed version to come out. The dubbed version will be something that pops out as an audio option same day and it will be in all mainstream languages.


I think five years is a bit optimistic for a time frame. You are talking about a machine translation with machine text to speech. Both are still showing real problems. My car's GPS can't understand my sister in law's speech and her accent is unnoticeable. Check out a video where closed captions are done on the fly. They still have major errors and omitted lines.

Quote:
understand that the AI is already learning to mimic the voice tones of the original actors so instead of odd English accents...we'll have English but in the original Japanese voice?


I'm not sure this is even something we would want. The whole idea about dubs is that they should sound as though they were originally spoken in English. Japanese voice tones and inflections are just not going to sound right in English.
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InfiniteJest



Joined: 22 Apr 2023
Posts: 136
PostPosted: Thu May 11, 2023 7:57 am Reply with quote
The real AI engines aren’t up front yet. But working at a 60k employee company we are now looking at it for back end applications and our research dept seems pretty confident it can do a lot. I know Siri and Alexa etc aren’t yet driven by the AI in ChatGPT and GPT we see is just a sliver of the iceberg. No we aren’t at Skynet or I-Robot levels but just extrapolating from what is now possible at a desktop things are going to shift. Ask any teachers or professors how even beta GPT is shaking up the education process.

That’s why I was surprised that voice was moving along so fast in the translation area. About 10 years ago I was able to do a good deal in France and China using google? translate on my cellphone but it was very limited and the tech had seemed to just move forward incrementally till recently. But that’s starting to change.

My prediction is that first round it will happen quickly with a commercial application doing subs/dubs that no one likes but that it will quickly improve. I don’t use Facebook/meta but this was from 3 years ago so one wonders about today https://about.fb.com/news/2020/10/first-multilingual-machine-translation-model/amp/

This article makes some sense to me https://www.alphatrad.com/news/future-impact-ai-translation in that we won’t see an overnight shift to machine translation but a hybrid version that combines real translation and voice actors may speed up the process greatly.

I don’t know about art or stories but our marketing people are sure that their team will be reduced in coming years as basic memos and press releases are automated.

My hindsight is 20/20 thought is that I should have learned plumbing.
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ChirashiD



Joined: 11 Oct 2006
Posts: 106
Location: WA
PostPosted: Thu May 11, 2023 10:57 am Reply with quote
I think the source of the fears people have will not come to pass within 5 years or even 20. I think it's fairly obvious more advanced AI requires faster and more powerful computers but we are actually in a state of diminishing returns when it comes to processing capacity. There is literally a ceiling at which future processing power can ever be achieved because chip technology is always dependent on how many circuits you can pack into a tiny space and we're very close to approaching that absolute minimum atomic unit of matter. No circuit can be smaller than a hydrogen atom. The only option is just make processers bigger but who wants that? Are we going to start seeing huge mainframe computers again?

The future of AI:
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InfiniteJest



Joined: 22 Apr 2023
Posts: 136
PostPosted: Thu May 11, 2023 6:39 pm Reply with quote
Fear in regards to anime isn’t really accurate. Change is the question. Voice and language translation is already happening so it’s really a matter of time..how much?

I don’t see automating the story writing or art work happening anytime soon. But he’ll I thought Netflix sounded stupid and would never destroy blockbuster so what do I know Wink
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Nate148



Joined: 24 May 2012
Posts: 470
PostPosted: Fri May 12, 2023 4:26 am Reply with quote
uh blockbuster was on the drain when Netflix came in and that was kind of a duh.
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InfiniteJest



Joined: 22 Apr 2023
Posts: 136
PostPosted: Fri May 12, 2023 10:35 am Reply with quote
Yes Nate I agree (in hindsight) Wink

For those who want to actually look at a couple of things that started happening before we even had public releases of ChatGPT etc...

Here is some light reading I found about IA Dubbing and where it's coming and already exists!

https://www.jpost.com/business-and-innovation/tech-and-start-ups/article-742738

https://www.inverse.com/input/tech/amazons-ai-can-automatically-dub-videos-into-other-languages

https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/18/22430340/deepfake-dubs-dubbing-film-tv-flawless-startup

https://deepdub.ai/

Two companies, Flawless and DeepDub seem worth paying attention to
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Nate148



Joined: 24 May 2012
Posts: 470
PostPosted: Fri May 12, 2023 3:43 pm Reply with quote
...that was clear at the time though and also https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/22/how-netflix-almost-lost-the-movie-rental-wars-to-blockbuster.html also none of this is important to the ai bs just because one company was a underdog once does not mean jump on band wagon see the dotcom bubble.
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InfiniteJest



Joined: 22 Apr 2023
Posts: 136
PostPosted: Sat May 20, 2023 10:19 am Reply with quote
Well now large language processing is already evolving into multimodal processing. Article says that all the major anime industry artists are concerned about the impact.

What’s the old curse? “May you live in interesting times”

Strap in, it’s gonna be a bumpy ride.
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Chiibi



Joined: 19 Dec 2011
Posts: 4829
PostPosted: Sun May 21, 2023 12:25 pm Reply with quote
......

*makes the Excalibur Reaction Face*

Not very much....I hope.

I really don't want freaking AI taking the place of human talents.....that is just.....please, no. For an artist, this is an absolute nightmare.

The only thing AI is good for right now is making me laugh.

Behold The Amazing Crab-Man in all his radiant glory
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InfiniteJest



Joined: 22 Apr 2023
Posts: 136
PostPosted: Sun May 21, 2023 4:19 pm Reply with quote
Hey Chiibi,

I do agree. My question isn't really one of hope...it's one of interest and concern.

that being said, I do think specifically for sub and dub features we will see something interesting within 5 years...something terrible within 2 (then 3 years for them to improve it).

As for art and storyline. I fear the worst not just for anime but for so many things. Sure some people won't be impacted. But a hell of a lot of others will. The problem is that the changes are being drive for profit not for humanity.
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InfiniteJest



Joined: 22 Apr 2023
Posts: 136
PostPosted: Wed Jun 07, 2023 7:55 am Reply with quote
On a related note. Aside from all the current doomsday clickbait news reports of AI eating humans. Was amused to see AIs role in working for God in a godless world. Guess I give them points for being ahead of the curve (unless you count Skynet and the Matrix and countless other movies). Wink

Oh as fun challenge. Go out to Bing or one of the other free AI image generators and ask it to make some anime characters for you. The results CAN be impressive.

Though they are also mixed. The buggiest issue so far is the “filters” and restrictions they use which ban use of a LOT of adjectives. I could make vampires but not demons or succubus. I couldn’t use age descriptions but I could specify many ages (like 25 years old). And I couldn’t use terms like shapely, curvy, voluptuous. And bikini got me a warning. So while AI is on the March, censorship is full steam
Ahead as well.

Strange times.
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Blood-
Bargain Hunter



Joined: 07 Mar 2009
Posts: 23781
PostPosted: Wed Jun 07, 2023 12:28 pm Reply with quote
By the by... "Blood-" is not actually a flesh and blood poster. Rather, "Blood-" is a highly sophisticated AI bot coldly plotting your collective doom.

Have a blessed day!
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