As Hollywood movie and TV writers are entering the third week of the strike, conversations around artificial intelligence and deepfake technology are finding a place at Cannes Film Festival 2023.
Many are concerned about studios using AI to write scripts.
A talk on AI at Cannes showed a presenter's voice being cloned and used to say a random phrase in three languages. Another anchor's face is replaced live on the screen. AI tools can now be used in voice acting, analysing scripts, designing a budget, and creating mock-up scenes. The panel discussion was on how AI will change the industry.
French director Mathias Chelebourg thinks, in time, 90% of production will be done by AI. "Hire right now an AI specialist in your team, whatever your job is, and hire it now, because in one year you will regret it."
At the festival, people have already seen Harrison Ford being de-aged with the help of AI in 'Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny'. Producers, for now, have ruled out using deepfake technology to keep the character going. However, some actors including Tom Hanks believe the AI tool will allow him to keep acting after his death. In his upcoming film 'Here', he is going to be de-aged with the help of deepfake.
"This set of technologies represents, you know, a set of tectonic social shifts like the industrial revolution, which will play out over the next 20–50 years and people should be worried about what happens. Unfortunately, I don't believe that you can stop the advancement of technology because a lot of it is open-source. There's not really anything to turn off. You should try to own and control the rights to your biometric data, how you sound, how you look, and really kind of lock that down," said Tom Graham, co-founder of AI firm Metaphysic which does face-swapping technology, to AFP.
Magdalena Zielinska of ElevenLabs in Poland says the company's voice cloning tool will help directors to see how a scene will sound. Advertisers can use it to check what kind of voice will resonate with most clients. She added that the technology will allow actors to licence their voices and do more projects at the same time.