Home Tech The controversies over the cloning of voices of El Brutalista and Emilia Pérez make AI the new battlefield of the awards season

The controversies over the cloning of voices of El Brutalista and Emilia Pérez make AI the new battlefield of the awards season

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The controversies over the cloning of voices of El Brutalista and Emilia Pérez make AI the new battlefield of the awards season

tThe use of artificial intelligence could become a fierce battleground during film awards season, as it was revealed that at least two leading contenders had used voice cloning to improve actors’ performances.

In an interview with motion picture technology publication Red Shark NewsBrutalist editor Dávid Jancsó said that, in an effort to create Hungarian dialogue so perfect “that not even the locals would notice any difference,” Jancsó incorporated the voices of lead actors Adrien Brody and Felicity Jones into the artificial intelligence software, as well as your own.

In the film, Brody plays Hungarian-Jewish architect László Tóth, who emigrates to the United States after World War II, and Jones plays his wife Erzsébet. Jancsó, a Hungarian speaker, said that while Brody’s mother was an émigré from Hungary in real life, “training” and re-recording using ADR (automatic dialogue replacement) with both the original actors and doubles” “It just didn’t work.” .

Jancsó said he then employed an artificial intelligence tool developed by Respeecher, a Ukraine-based company that was previously involved in “cloning” the voice of James Earl Jones for the Obi-Wan Kenobi television series, to add sounds and individual letters to both. Dialogue in Hungarian by Brody and Jones. “Most of his Hungarian dialogue has a part of me speaking in there. We were very careful in maintaining their performances. “It’s mainly about replacing letters here and there… We had so much dialogue in Hungarian that we really needed to speed up the process, otherwise we would still be in the position.”

A still from Emilia Pérez. Photography: PR

It also emerged that AI cloning was used to improve the singing voice of Emilia Pérez’s Karla Sofía Gascón, in the trans gangster musical directed by Jacques Audiard. In an interview recorded in May at the Cannes film festivalThe film’s re-recording mixer, Cyril Holtz, said it was necessary to increase the range of Gascón’s vocal range and that the production used Respeecher to combine her singing with that of Camille, the French pop star who co-wrote the film’s soundtrack. movie.

By contrast, Heretic, the horror film starring Hugh Grant, has taken a radical stance against AI, with its closing credits including the message: “No generative AI was used in the making of this film.”

The recent strike by actors and writers was called, at least in part, by the threat that AI poses to much of the film, television and video game industry, with agreements that include “guardrails” against the use of AI to generate scripts. A strike by video game actors to replicate their voices is still ongoing.

Filmmaker Paul Schrader revealed in a Facebook post who had also been experimenting with AI, using ChatGPT to generate ideas for films by major auteurs including Paul Thomas Anderson, Quentin Tarantino, Ingmar Bergman and himself. Writing, “I AM AMAZED,” he added, “Every idea ChatGPT came up with (in a few seconds) was good. And original. And developed. Why should writers sit for months looking for a good idea when AI can provide it in seconds? Instead of being an endorsement of AI, Schrader told The Guardian: “People mistakenly think that AI is a technological advance like (the) automobile, when in reality it is a virus driven by a hyperbolic curve.”

In Hollywood’s current feverish mood over AI, it is difficult to estimate the impact these revelations about the technology’s use may have on the current Oscar race, for which the final nominations will be announced on January 23. Brody is now a strong contender for best actor, having won the Golden Globe for best actor in a drama, while Gascón appears to be the first trans actor nominated for a best actress Oscar.

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