As time goes by, the deepfake are more surprising, but at the same time dangerous. While they are a testament to how far artificial intelligence has advanced in recent years, they could also be a means of misleading people. The technology that we will introduce to you today, however, has a completely different purpose: to mark a before and after in the film dubbing process .
According to information from Wired, this technology was developed by Flawless , a British firm that, after verifying that the dubbing in films were deficient, decided to resort to artificial intelligence and the deepfakes to try to fix the problem . It is worth mentioning that this company was founded by Scott Mann , a filmmaker recognized for feature films such as The Tournament, Heist and Final Score.
So Flawless went to work to create an artificial intelligence-based film dubbing solution. The initial idea was simple: change the language an actor speaks on the big screen . However, this represented a challenge for several reasons. The first of them, that the dialogues usually change in the dubbing, being necessary to adapt the movement of their lips. Also, sentences may last longer or shorter than the original conversation.
Deepfakes could revolutionize cinema
Robert De Niro Mann's curiosity led to deepfake research by Christian Theobalt, a German professor who had already shown interest in using artificial intelligence to improve film dubbing. To create this technology, Theobalt proposed to capture the facial expressions of the actors, and then to do the same with that of other people saying the dialogue in another language. Once the material is obtained, a process intervenes that fuses the face and head of the main actor with the lips of the dubbing actor .
Although there is a world of difference from paper to practice, Flawless was able to create technology capable of dubbing simple dialogue from iconic scenes. The first is a phrase from Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver that is now spoken in German. However, there are also experiments with Tom Hanks speaking Spanish in Forrest Gump; or Tom Cruise speaking his lines in French in A Few Good Men. Although they have not shared any videos, Mann assures that his deepfake works so well that the audience will not even notice the original language of the film .
Do the actors approve of artificial intelligence?
Beyond doubling feature films with great quality, another objective of Flawless is that the production companies can alter the dialogues of a scene that requires changes . The deepfake would also prevent the actors from returning to the filming studios. Of course, the company faces a possible setback from the community of actors, since not many see with good eyes that a technology alters its performance . On the other hand, there is the same concern as other variants of deepfake, that is, that the AI is used for illicit purposes.
“There are legitimate and ethical uses of this technology. But any use must be made only with the consent of the artists involved and with adequate and appropriate compensation,” said Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, who serves as the general counsel of the Screen Actors Guild. Of course, Flawless is just taking its first steps with deepfakes and it would be difficult to establish when we will see this technology in the film industry .
