Andrew Heinzman
Foreign movies with dubbed audio are easy to pay attention to, but only if you can overlook the out-of-sync movement of actors mouths. The solution? A TrueSync technology developed by Flawless AI that automatically syncs actors lips to match dubbed audio. In other words, deepfake lips.
Is this an outrageous and expensive way to avoid reading subtitles? For sure. But the tech is impressive and could make foreign movies more accessible to people who read arguments on the internet all day but can’t sit through 90 minutes of subtitles. In demonstration videos made by Flawless AI, you can see that the FreeSync tech is good at its job, and removes one of the biggest distractions found in dubbed films.
FreeSync isn’t all that different from existing deepfake technology, though it focuses on manipulating actors’ mouths instead of their whole face. Interestingly, Flawless claims that the FreeSync technology doesn’t change the subject’s facial expressions or emotions, thereby maintaining the actor’s performance—at least to a degree.
If FreeSync technology ever becomes popular, then film fans will argue about it for the rest of time. Subtitle evangelists already claim that dubbed audio erases an actor’s performance, and manipulating the actor’s face to fit a dub might take things a step too far. But for the average person, FreeSync tech might be the difference between enjoying a movie and not paying attention. It will do more good than harm. Probably.
