AI: The use of AI in the Arts becomes an 'Oscars' issue. RTZ #621

AI: The use of AI in the Arts becomes an 'Oscars' issue. RTZ #621

The issue of AI being used in movies and music to augment performances is rearing its head, especially ahead of the 2025 Oscars in March. This is something that has been brewing for a while, as I noted back last summer in “Digital Twins being rolled out…deals leading to AI created mainstream performance”.

This time Forbes explains in “‘Emilia Perez and the Brutalist’ AI Controversies, Explained”:

“A pair of big Oscar contenders—Emilia Pérez and The Brutalist—are embroiled in separate controversies after revelations that each film used AI during production.”

“Although the use of AI technology in The Brutalist was addressed in tech publication Red Shark News’ interview with the film’s editor, Dávid Jancsó, on Jan. 11, the controversy didn’t erupt until Monday when the information made its way to Hollywood’s trade publications.”

“Word about the use of AI during the production of Emilia Pérez initially surfaced in May. Per The Guardian, the flap has made its way to the front burner again with the brewing controversy over the use of the technology in The Brutalist.”

“The use of AI—an acronym for artificial intelligence—has become a hot topic in recent years in Hollywood over the fear that it could take jobs away from actors and filmmaking crews.”

“As such, AI was a major sticking point in negotiations during the Screen Actors Guild and Writers Guild of America’s concurrent strikes against Hollywood’s studios in 2023.”

Vanity Fair goes even deeper in The Brutalist AI controversy, offering additional details:

“The Brutalist seems poised for Oscar glory. The A24 film just picked up 10 Academy Award nominations—tied for second most of any film—including best supporting actress for Felicity Jones, best actor for Adrien Brody, best director for Brady Corbet, and a nomination for best picture. Corbet’s film, which follows Brody’s fictional architect László Tóth as he emigrates to the US from Hungary after World War II, has been on an impressive awards season run; earlier this month, it took home three Golden Globes, including best drama. But earlier this week, The Brutalist hit its first roadblock due to a controversial aspect of its production: the use of generative AI.”

“The brouhaha began when The Brutalist’s Oscar-nominated editor, Dávid Jancsó, gave a rather candid interview with video tech publication RedShark News. In it, he revealed that the production used Ukrainian software company Respeecher, which specializes in AI voice-generating technology, to make Jones and Brody sound more authentic when they spoke Hungarian in the film. (The British Jones and the American Brody, whose mother is Hungarian, spend most of the film speaking Hungarian-accented English; their characters speak their native language only a few times.)”

This budding AI/Oscar kerfuffle is analogous to the use of emerging technology driven equipment and suit improvement in Sports, especially at the Olympics level. As Vanity Fair explains:

“But for many others, the use of generative AI—no matter how insignificant or well-intentioned—is akin to juicing in professional sports: an unfair and unethical way to achieve better results.”

It’s notable that at the Grammy’s last night, an ‘AI-restored Beatles song wo Grammy for Best Rock Performance’, as the Verge noted:

“The Beatles have won their eighth competitive Grammy award thanks to a little help from artificial intelligence. The 2023 track “Now and Then” — which Billboard reports is the first song knowingly created with AI assistance to earn a Grammy nomination — was awarded Best Rock Performance on Sunday, beating out competition from Green Day, Pearl Jam, The Black Keys, Idles, and St. Vincent.”

“The track was pieced together using a demo that John Lennon recorded in the late 1970s, with Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, and George Harrison later providing their own contributions in the mid-‘90s, with the aim of including the final song in The Beatles Anthology project. “Now and Then” wasn’t released, however, due to technical limitations at the time preventing Lennon’s vocals and piano from being separated from the original lo-fi demo.”

And it wasn’t even the latest Generative AI tech:

“McCartney and Starr later managed to complete the song in 2021 with help from filmmaker Peter Jackson and his sound team, who developed machine-learning technology (a type of AI that uses algorithms to learn from data) capable of isolating and cleaning up different components of Lennon’s recording. This greatly differs from generative AI tech that can be used to create music that mimics an artist’s style and vocals, but confusion around AI terminology led to some backlash online when the track was released.”

“To be clear, nothing has been artificially or synthetically created. It’s all real and we all play on it,” McCartney said in 2023, addressing speculation about AI’s role in development. “We cleaned up some existing recordings — a process which has gone on for years.”

These AI issues are going to continue to be debated in film and music, and across the Arts in general. And potentially in other industries.

It’s all part and parcel of this AI Tech Wave and other before it. Evolving technologies always change how things were done in the past. And the norms and values in the industries impacted don’t Scale as fast as the technology. Stay tuned.

(NOTE: The discussions here are for information purposes only, and not meant as investment advice at any time. Thanks for joining us here)





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