Flawless AI: “You can't put new lines in people's mouths without consent”

IBC

AI tools like Flawless visual dubbing are making a strong case for standard use in Hollywood

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When The Brutalist came under fire for using AI to massage the tricky phonetics of its non-Hungarian speaking actors it may have torpedoed Academy votes for a Best Picture win. Such injustices won’t happen in future as the entertainment industry gets a more mature grip on what AI actually is.

“2025 is the year when that the dam breaks,” says Nick Lynes, co-founder & co-CEO of AI company Flawless. “Provided those AI tools are trusted AI is transformational in an entirely positive way.”

Already this year indie feature producer A24 has lured Adobe’s Chief Strategy Officer and VP of design, responsible for rollout of AI tool Firefly, to work on future film projects. Dneg has acquired Metaphysic and corralled its IP in an already substantial AI R&D division.

Last year, indie producer Blumhouse (the label behind hits such as BlackKklansman and M3agn) made a deal with Meta that will enable filmmakers like The Spurlock Sisters and Casey Affleck to use Meta’s Movie Gen model to create short films.

Lionsgate, the studio behind the John Wick and Hunger Games series, partnered with Gen-AI developer Runway which allows the AI company to create and train an AI model on the film studio’s content.  Director James Cameron is a board member at Stability AI, despite apparently intending to hoist a pre-credit sign on Avatar: Fire and Ash stating that no Gen AI was used to make it.

“Understandably, when AI first broke onto the scene and started to demonstrate its capabilities there was a negative reaction,” Lynes says. “We are now in a phase of people beginning to understand what AI is truly capable of when it is in the hands of professionals. The fear cycle subsides and an education cycle kicks in.”

Flawless is a London based startup co-founded by Lynes and Scott Mann, the director and producer behind 2002 breakout thriller Fall. It has launched DeepEditor, an ‘ethical’ AI-tool which allows for rapid replacement of onscreen filmed dialogue with alternate lines, without requiring the crew to reassemble on set. It claims that this costs less than one-tenth of a traditional reshoot and was used on Fall to digitally replace expletive-filled dialogue and keep a PG-13 rating for international distribution. Its success is said to have led directly to a Fall sequel now in production with ten times the crew size.

Last month, Flawless paid to present DeepEditor at the British Film Editors Awards which could either be seen as foolhardy or vote of confidence and transparency in its product.

“It was received really well,” Lynes says. “We had people coming up to us saying that they were really cynical but now they are excited by the possibilities. One of them said we were really brave to walk in there and do a presentation with an AI product to a room full of film editor's but gave us credit where credit's due.”

Flawless has not yet presented to the American association of film editors (ACE) but says it is talking to “the big trade bodies in North America and around the world.”

Its confidence stems from having built its AI tech in compliance with ethical AI standards. Lynes explains that its models are derived from “clean data” either licensed or created by the company itself (presumably on Mann’s productions like Fall).

It has also integrated consent flows within the software and uses its own Artistic Rights Treasury (ART) system to manage rights and ensure compliance. “Any changes made to dialogue in post will require the explicit informed approval of the acting talent.”

Its AI model is able to study the “idiosyncratic style of every performance” in any selected feature rather than apply generic changes. “This means that when any modification or alteration is made the exact nuance of each particular character's performance is maintained,” says Lynes. “We preserve the style of the actor’s original performance.”

Similar technology developed by Flawless in a product called TrueSync is capable of syncing actors’ lip movements with different languages, improving the quality of dubbed films and making global distribution more accessible and less expensive.

The company calls its visual dubbing approach ‘vubbing’. Only the actor’s mouth is being manipulated “with micro movements in the rest of the face,” says Lynes.

The English-language release for German language film The Light directed by Tom Tykwer which opened the Berlin Film Festival will be dubbed into English using TrueSync.  Flawless also has partnerships with Deluxe and Pixelogic to use TrueSync for localising titles.

“Again, nothing gets done without approval,” Lynes insists. “A director can't drive new dialogue into an actor’s performance even if we preserved their style without the talent giving explicit informed consent.  You can't ask them to ‘say’ a new line and not have their consent for that. We're not in the business of puppeteering.”

These attributes have been commended by U.S actors and voice artist union SAG-AFTRA. Its National Executive Director and Chief Negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland says SAG-AFTRA is working with Flawless “to ensure the future of AI technology aligns with our mission of supporting and protecting creative professionals.”

Flawless insists that it will use only original voice artists for their “visual translations” and not synthetic AI voice technology.

“This is not something we're involved with,” Lynes stresses. “We don't have skin in the game.” Nonetheless he thinks the field of synthetic voice tech will evolve and become part of the filmmaking process.

“The tech is not good enough yet but it will do in time and then it will become a creative choice [whether to use it or not]. That would require a conversation between the talent, the unions and producers and there probably emerge some kind of commercial arrangement where relevant consents are requested.”

It’s another sign of how the feeling in Hollywood is changing toward ways AI can empower not replace human creativity.

“The idea that labour groups want to clamp down on artificial intelligence to halt progress is a misconception,” said Crabtree-Ireland in a statement for the World Economic Forum in January. “We don’t want to stop innovation; we want to be part of guiding it.”

If Flawless is to be adopted into the postproduction workflow it would need to be integrated with Adobe, Avid and Final Cut Pro editing tools. Lynes says there is an announcement along such lines coming in Q2.

“Something Scott said to me on day one was that there is absolutely no way we're going to get filmmakers to change their workflows,” Lynes says. “They might change their workflows as a result of things being introduced to their existing workflows, and they evolve it themselves, but we can't expect people to do anything differently. We're are very sympathetic to the existing workflow.

“AI is basically additive not subtractive to the creative process and the more dialogue we can have about it the better the understanding will be and the more people will come to realise that AI can make a positive difference.”

In the education phase of coming to terms with AI he says companies like his can play a role.

“We can sit with professionals and explain to them that no data and no performances have been stolen to generate new performances because the data that sits within our system has been legitimately sourced with the permission of everybody concerned. You simply can't put new lines in people's mouths without consent.”