Featured in this episode of Tech News of the Week
So you’ve probably heard about that whole SAG/Writers strike thing, right? About how the cartel that makes major motion pictures basically wants actors to sign away their images and voices for free, forever, and writers to basically be unnecessary? Well, those aren’t the only ways that AI is poised to make an impact.
Unsurprisingly, AI is already in active use in visual effects houses, speeding up renders and generating fantastical backgrounds like certain scenes in Everything Everywhere All At Once. But, here are a couple other future potential AI uses to chew on.
First, and in my mind most interestingly, using an actual actors voice as the dubbed voice for overseas distribution. For a long time there have been foreign language versions of Hollywood movies. These movies used separate native speakers to dub over the actors, in many cases to hilarious effect. Not all actors can be Antonio Banderas, who apparently does his own dubs in at least 5 languages.
AI could make it so actors’ voices could be used for the 40-50 languages the movie wants to be released in. Not even Antonio can do that kind of heavy lifting. Interesting, and troubling. On the one hand, authenticity? I guess? On the other, that’s a whole subgenre of work that could disappear overnight.
So ok, that’s one. Here’s another: what about using AI to create storyboards? This is, in my mind an awful idea that some executives can’t wait to put into action. This is going to create repetitive and uncreative shot ideas, in the same way that ChatGPT creates repetitive and uncreative storylines. So we’re talking about taking banality and into three dimensions, all in the name of saving a buck.
Come to think of it, has Marvel already started using AI?