Danica Davidson
April 14, 2025 
In a recent interview with Forbes Magazine, Crunchyroll President Rahul Purini talked about expanding the business and tariffs, and he also walked back previous statements he made about using artificial intelligence.
In February 2024, Purini had said, “AI is definitely something that we think about at a lot of different workflows within the organization. Right now, one of the areas we are very focused on testing is our subtitling and closed captioning, where we go from speech to text and how do we improve and optimize our processes where we can get the subtitles done in various languages across the world faster so that we can launch as close to the Japanese release as possible. So that’s definitely an area where we are focused on.” He also indicated that AI dubbing was a possibility, though “We don’t find the technology to be there yet . . .”
Now, in the new Forbes interview, he said, “We are not considering AI in the creative process, including our voice actors. We consider them to be creators because they are contributing to the story and plot with their voice.”
According to Forbes, this doesn’t necessarily mean no AI at all. He is interested in using AI for “content discoverability, recommendations and personalization,” though they won’t use it for anime. He stated that Crunchyroll stands with creators.
He acknowledged that Crunchyroll gets its merchandise from multiple countries. With some tariffs already in place and others looming, prices for some things are already being affected. And that could include Crunchyroll, unless things change.
In regards to expanding, Purini hopes to work with most Japanese publishers, and Crunchyroll is also moving more into games and merchandise. According to him, people in many different cultures have expressed an interest in having their stories expressed through anime. He noted, “We set out to source stories that are Indian, for example, and take them to creators in Japan to see if there is interest in telling these stories. This enriches the stories that anime can tell, making them global narratives told by Japanese creators.”
Source: Forbes
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Danica Davidson is the author of the bestselling Manga Art for Beginners with artist Melanie Westin, plus its sequel, Manga Art for Everyone, and the first-of-its-kind manga chalk book Chalk Art Manga, both illustrated by professional Japanese mangaka Rena Saiya. Check out her other comics and books at www.danicadavidson.com.
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