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AI in movies


Maryokutai

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Wasn't sure where to put this but I guess stuff like this is bound to happen more frequently now so maybe a proper topic makes sense.

 

The thing I'm alluding to is that The Brutalist, who got nominated in multiple categories for the Oscars, has used AI: https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/story/the-brutalists-ai-controversy-explained?srsltid=AfmBOop-5Rvh6QYXJOT5HFYpRvTuctivEYXoHKIto9XbyhJXF5fHb9Ug

 

The specific use case here was to make both Brody and Jones sound more accurate doing the few scenes in which they speak Hungarian (for the majority of the movie they talk with a fake accent, as far as I understand) by re-tuning certain letters through voice input from a native speaker and letting it pass through an AI called Respeech or something.

 

I will admit it always throws me out of a movie for a bit when I hear, say, an American actor talk in German or French and it's pretty obvious they have no idea what they're saying because it sounds all completely wrong. On the other hand, whenever I now hear someone use another language and it sounds right, my mind will immediately drift to this story, so it will still pull me out of it, but for different reasons. And that's just the tip of the iceberg, obviously, considering both actors are nominated for an Oscar and yet a (small) part of their performance in the movie was altered. You can make the point that it didn't affect their acting, but then again speech and dialect are part of the acting process as well and can often be the differentiating factor between a good performance and an excellent one.

 

I'm not sure where I stand yet, but strong tendency towards anything AI related in general, but certainly a lot of discussions will happen in the foreseeable future about this. 

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I understand the point you're making - but is it really that fundamentally different than things such as:

 

- Autotuned music vocals 

 

- A music track created by mixing vocals from various takes in a recording session

 

- Extensive use of green screen & CGI

 

- Hollywood musicals that used uncredited singers, passed off for many years, as being performed by the actor in the star role

 

- the use of virtual appearances of dead

actors (e.g. Peter Cushing & Carrie Fisher in SW movies)

 

So I'm never convinced if a industry wants to take a stance against 'AI' why they might still tolerate the above ?

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At least a few of those are already controversial, Peter Cushing was long dead by the time they were using his likeness in Rogue One. Also it looked absolutely terrible.

 

In terms of 'artificiality' in films it's not new I suppose but what is different is how fake it is I think, there's still a lot of acting involved in CG. You never see Josh Brolin in Infinite War but you see his performance through Thanos. Same with Andy Serkis in LOTR. Like they are there, acting with everyone else.

 

But I think the danger with AI isn't this immediate example it's how it could be used to manufacture more Peter Cushing type performances, the strikes a few years ago were based partly on this I think, where there is this existential worry about a slippery slope which could be used by corps to essentially own an actor's likeness and puppeteer them for whatever work or property they want. There's this dehumanising thing with it which is very different to other types of fakery, except maybe the Peter Cushing example (even then, there's an actor on the other side of that performance)

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_SAG-AFTRA_strike

 

Quote

In the press conference, Crabtree-Ireland alleged that the AMPTP attempted to include a proposal that allowed studios to, for a one-time fee equivalent to one day's pay, have exclusive and indefinite rights to extras' likenesses, including the use of generative AI to replicate them on screen

 

 

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Auto-tune in music is probably the closest to the Brutalist example, but I do differentiate between them still. I'm not particularly deep into the music scene, but if you are building the 'perfect' mix for a recorded version of your song that will, for all intents and purposes, be the final end product that will prevail, I think it's fair to finetune a bit here and there. It's not just the singer after all, every instrument gets a pass over as well. And it's not like you could get away with being a poor musician, as you'll be making a significant portion of your money with live shows where you can't really fake it (at least not without a massive risk behind it).

 

Like dwarf says the other examples do still require some work from an actor, in some cases it might even be more challenging because they're talking to green balls or reacting to green paint on a wall.

 

Of course the whole ethical aspect is more important, it's just that this particular example was complete news to me and ultimately it all just feeds into the same pool of questionable decisions driven by the availability of AI. Who's to say an actor might even have to pretend speaking in another language at some point. Maybe AI will just use their voice, translate the text and reshuffle the movement of their mouth. And by that point we might even have found a loophole they didn't think about when looking for compromises during that whole SAG-AFTRA strike.

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AI literally steals work without permission while putting the peoples work it steals out of work and business.
 

It uses an ungodly amount of electricity and water - https://www.forbes.com/sites/cindygordon/2024/02/25/ai-is-accelerating-the-loss-of-our-scarcest-natural-resource-water/

 

Fuck AI. 


A lot of the comparisons are already problematic as been said but they’ve still got a lot more human input and checks than AI slop. 

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