Is the International Film Industry Starting to Embrace AI?
Has Hollywood reached peak AI paranoia? This awards season, before Karla Sofía Gascón’s posts on X (formerly Twitter) about George Floyd and Islam became the focus of consternation, the Oscar uproar was centered on the use of artificial intelligence in the tweaking of voice performances in Emilia Pérez — for Gascón’s singing — and in Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist, to improve the pronunciation of Adrien Brody and Felicity Jones’ Hungarian-language dialog.
The virulence of the backlash against such minor and technical applications of AI — used, in both cases, with the full participation and approval of the artists involved — illustrates the widespread perception, inside the film industry and among the general public, that AI is a threat to jobs and to artistic integrity. An AI zero-tolerance policy has become fashionable for celebrities, with the likes of Robert Downey Jr., Glenn Close and Hank Azaria raising the alarm. Distributors have taken to slapping “no AI” labels on their films, the tech equivalent of a “no animals were harmed” guarantee of ethical behavior. The “made by humans” credit at the end of Adam Elliot’s delightful claymation feature Memoir of a Snail (an animated Oscar nominee this year) never fails to get a cheer.
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But behind the scenes, things may be changing, and the industry’s AI fear and loathing are transforming into something more positive and optimistic.
“There’s an incredible undercurrent of excitement coming from a lot of filmmakers and artists right now about what these new tools, if used correctly, can do,” says Scott Mann, co-founder and co-CEO of Flawless, an L.A.-based AI company that specializes in foreign-language dubbing. “But people are scared to talk about it because of what happened with The Brutalist.”
Flawless worked with German director Tom Tykwer on The Light, the opening night film of the 75th Berlinale, using its “immersive dubbing” AI tech to produce an English-language version of the movie. Berlinale audiences will see “the original, German version, as intended,” says Mann, but North American buyers at Berlin’s European Film Market will have the option of a Flawless AI dubbed version. Flawless and XYZ Films have acquired the English-dubbed rights and will be offering it to buyers at Berlin’s European Film Market. (Beta Cinema is selling international rights to The Light.)
Traditional dubbing requires changing the dialog in a translated script to match the lip movements of the original. Flawless’ AI tech adjusts the lip movements of the original actors’ performances to sync with dubbing dialog recorded in another language, either by the original actor or a native-language performer. It differs from “voice cloning” techniques used in The Brutalist and Emilia Pérez, from Ukrainian AI group Respeecher, which uses a recording of an actor’s performance and transforms it digitally, allowing Gascón to hit higher notes, say, or Brody to get his tongue around the Hungarian “?.”
Flawless is pitching its tech as a way to boost the global audience for international films, particularly more mainstream movies with less hard-core art house appeal. Indie producer/distributor XYZ Films (The Raid, BlackBerry) is planning a slate of domestic releases of Flawless-dubbed foreign genre titles starting with Swedish sci-fi thriller Watch the Skies (aka UFO Sweden) and including French comedy thriller Vincent Must Die and Korean action hit Smugglers.
“The filmmakers are thrilled because it means their movies, which would never have gotten a U.S. theatrical release, are going to be seen more widely,” says Mann.
Flawless, as Mann is keen to point out, has deals in place with SAG-AFTRA to ensure the use of its tech is in agreement with the guild. At his Jan. 21 speech to Davos, SAG-AFTRA chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland name-checked the company as an example of AI designed “to serve human creativity, not replace it.”
“The studios should be developing this tech and its implementation in the industry alongside the talent unions,” says David McClafferty, a former dubbing producer for Netflix. “Studio transparency, not only with talent, but also with the audience [is essential]. The audience is not stupid! Studios have a choice between short-term misguided experimentation in secret that will lead to future restrictions and regulations, or transparency and long-term trust and success with talent, partners and audiences.”
Outside the U.S., and in the lower-budget indie world, AI tech is being readily embraced as a means to more cheaply and easily adapt films for the international marketplace.
Fabián Forte’s Argentine horror-fantasy film The Witch Game used AI tools to re-create the original actors’ Spanish language performances in English for release in the U.S. and U.K.. Putin, a political biopic of Vladimir Putin from the Polish director Bezaleel, used AI tech to re-create the face of Vladimir Putin over the body of an actor with a similar build to that of the Russian leader. The film has been a strong seller for German outfit Kinostar, which has signed deals in more than 60 countries.
“Overall, buyers responded positively to the AI aspect in Putin,” Kinostar managing director Michael Roesch tells THR. “When we first released the trailers, many were astonished at how closely the Putin in the film resembled the real Putin. This was definitely a selling point for us.”
AI has already become a standard tool to aid the dubbing and subtitling of films and series, particularly in the high-volume indie and genre markets. The boom in demand has led to a new cottage industry of synch companies such as DeepDub, DubFormer, ElevenLabs and Papercup, all using different versions of broadly similar translation and dubbing tools.
Legitimate concerns remain that such mass AI adoption will mean job losses and more generic content.
“Left to their own devices, upper management would implement AI for dubbing from top to bottom and take their chances with the inevitable pushback. Because for them, shareholders take precedence over art,” says Debra Chin, a dubbing and localization consultant who was director of international dubbing for Netflix from 2017 to 2020.
“I believe in an industry with ethical AI alongside talent,” says McClafferty. “Localization is peanuts compared to the wider industry, but localization is at the tip of the spear of this tech and the unions may use localization as a bellwether of how the studios will attempt to implement AI tech overall.”
In this period of creative and financial crisis for the indie film industry, many are starting to see a different possibility — one where AI, if implemented with care, could be a catalyst for creativity rather than a threat to it.
“Fears over AI, combined with the industry’s current pains, are the real problem,” says Mann. “The best our industry has ever done is when it embraces technology responsibly. AI should be consent-driven, copyrightable, and artist-focused — so creators can do more, take risks and bring originality back. It’s time for a more nuanced conversation, not just making AI the villain.”
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