People saying they would rather hear an AI-generated dub of an anime than listen modern dub VAs is driven in part because of the attitudes of VAs, localizers and studios who behave in petty and childish ways, who censor and completely change lines and content, and engage in rampant cronyism where they hire the same clique members to shout into mics. It didn't have to be that way, if they actually cared about quality but most of the American localization industry doesn't give a fuck about anything remotely like "artistic integrity", so why should people care if talentless hack VAs who behave like the most arrogant tools have their jobs threatened by crappy text-to-speech programs?
The problem is that the American localization industry never developed a proper culture for making high-quality work, as foreign media used to almost always struggle in the US and just couldn't compete with domestic media. Furthermore, subtitling being the preferred method didn't help either. Now with foreign media, such as anime, getting more popular every single day, we can really see all the flaws of America's localization industry and its underdeveloped culture.
An example of what a successful localization industry looks like would be Hungary's. Hungarian is a language spoken by only 12 million people, but that didn't stop the Hungarians from dubbing tons of foreign media. In fact, you'll have a hard time finding anything that is not dubbed on television. Most Hungarians wouldn't be exposed to subtitled media until the rise of streaming services, and even then many shows still would get a dub. To this day Hungarian dubs and their voice actors enjoy a cult following. Even among people who can speak English, many of them prefer watching the Hungarian version of their shows and films.
There are quite a few reasons behind this success. First of all, having so few Hungarians meant domestic media could only be enjoyed by a small audience, and there wasn't foreign demand for them either, so producing them was inefficient compared to importing and localizing foreign media. A consequence of this is that there used to be a lack of professionals who exclusively worked in Hungary's small media industry. Historically, many people there used to do traditional forms of art as well, such as acting in plays or writing novels. Many translators were writers and poets themselves back in the day.
Another thing that helped Hungarian localization culture develop is the state. There were regulations encouraging dubbing foreign media since 1935, and dubbing became mandatory in 1963 because of previous successes.
Despite how its golden age has ended and voice acting and localizing have become sweatshop-tier jobs in Hungary, there are still some good dubs produced to this day that are just better than the original. Hell, there are high-quality fandubs being made for video games with real voice actors because people are willing to fund such projects.
I find it ironic how English-speaking voice actors are often overpaid and manage to be controversial all the time, while Hungarian voice actors are underpaid but universally beloved.
