Color me shocked that the anime subtitling company founded on paying people double digits to handle entire episodes (not double digits an hour, double digits in total) is as interested in AI as a supposed cost cutting measure as any of the other translation agencies out there frothing at the mouth over higher margins when they already make a killing off our backs. That this dude also cites demand for translations released as close to the Japanese airings as possible is another pointed reminder that simultaneous launches routinely result in work produced under duress. Because very few companies in most any of these entertainment industries will do the right thing and staff up and increase resources accordingly to fulfill such mandates.
A billion dollars changing hands to buy the site out and not a damn cent has been spent to improve the working conditions of the people most responsible for taking anime global. Just business as usual. So fucking tired of seeing my colleagues have to fend off these hyenas and justify their continued employment day in and day out.
sort of fascinated by how bad an idea this is-- while it'll probably result in some short-term benefit for the companies, the impression i get is that simultaneous releases is mostly to beat out hobbyists who aren't restricted to things like budgets or work schedules to complete releases. However, it's pretty clear that this doesn't really stop piracy so much as make people less likely to seek it out as easily, since pirates don't really have any issue scraping those same sites for their own releases.
on the other hand, releasing clearly inferior subs is a GREAT way to drive people towards piracy who might not usually seek it out-- but more importantly, this is likely to get more people to learn how to do their own fansubbing-- regardless of how you feel about it, AI translations eliminates one of the hardest and most time-consuming part of fansubbing, which is actually learning japanese-- which means these companies are essentially increasing their own competition in the long run by giving more people an intro and a reason to organize and make connections within that community.
That "and yet a trace of the true self exists in the false self" dinosaur meme, but it's Crunchyroll
Piracy site streaming fansubs stolen from the internet -> Legit streaming site
Legit streaming site -> This bullshit
This bullshit -> an explosion of fansubs
