- Madrid's Carvajal to miss several months after serious knee injury
- Two elephants die in flash flooding in northern Thailand
- Sabalenka targets world number one and Wuhan hat-trick
- Tunisia votes with Saied set for re-election
- Bagnaia sets 'example' with Japan MotoGP win to cut gap on Martin
- Intense Israeli bombing rocks Beirut ahead of war anniversary
- Mozambique vote: no suspense but some disillusion
- Austrian rapper channels anti-racist rage in Romani hip-hop songs
- Ohtani magic powers Dodgers over Padres in MLB playoff thriller
- Five of the best: Pakistan-England Test thrillers
- Man sets arm on fire as marches across US mark Gaza war anniversary
- Vietnam's young coffee entrepreneurs brew up a revolution
- Trump rallies at site of failed assassination: 'Never quit'
- Too hot by day, Dubai's floodlit beaches are packed at night
- Is music finally reckoning with #MeToo?
- Fans hail Trump's 'guts' as he returns to site of rally shooting
- Lebanon state media says Israeli strikes hit south Beirut
- Miami on track for MLS record points after win in Toronto
- Monaco take top spot in Ligue 1 with win at Rennes
- Madrid beat Villarreal to level Liga leaders Barca
- Thuram treble fires Inter past Torino and up to second
- 'Fight': defiant Trump jets in to site of rally shooting
- Mexico City's new mayor sworn in with pledges on water, housing
- Israel on alert ahead of Hamas attack anniversary
- Guardians maul Tigers in MLB playoff series opener
- Macron criticises Israel on Gaza, Lebanon operations
- French rugby player whistled but 'serene' on return amid ongoing rape case
- Retegui hat-trick fires five-star Atalanta to hammering of Genoa
- Heavyweights Australia, England off to World Cup winning starts
- Visiting UN refugee agency chief decries 'terrible crisis' in Lebanon
- Spinners come to party as England defeat Bangladesh at T20 World Cup
- Search continues for missing in deadly Bosnia floods
- Man City sink Fulham to get title bid back on track
- France's Auradou whistled on Pau return in Perpignan loss amid ongoing rape case
- A 'forgotten' valley in storm-hit North Carolina, desperate for help
- Arsenal hit back in style after Southampton scare
- Hezbollah heir apparent Safieddine out of contact after strikes
- Liverpool stay top of Premier League as Arsenal, Man City win
- In dank Tour of Emilia, Pogacar shines in rainbow jersey
- DR Congo launches mpox vaccination drive, hoping to curb outbreak
- Trump returns to site of failed assassination
- Careless Leverkusen held to Bundesliga draw
- O'Brien's 'superstar' Kyprios posts landmark win on Arc weekend
- Liverpool suffer Alisson injury blow
- Habosi helps Racing beat Vannes before Auradou's playing return
- Thousands march in London in support of Palestinians, 1 year after Oct 7
- Israel readying response to Iran missile attack
- Schutt, Mooney help Australia beat Sri Lanka in Women's T20 World Cup
- Liverpool extend Premier League lead with win at Palace
- Djokovic 'shakes rust off' to make third round of Shanghai Masters
Filmmakers at Cannes grapple with 'tectonic' AI shift
At an AI talk on a Cannes beach, a presenter's voice is cloned and used to say a random phrase in three languages, while another's face is replaced live on screen as they speak.
Few of the film buffs attending the premiere industry festival are shocked.
Ever since the artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT took the world by storm six months ago, spurring an AI race among tech giants, the technology has shaken up the film industry.
The use of AI to write scripts is one of the leading concerns among Hollywood movie and TV writers who are in their third week of a strike that has upended productions.
However the technology is revolutionising everything from voice acting, to analysing scripts and coming up with a budget, to creating mock-ups of scenes before you even pick up a camera.
"New things are created every single day," says Quinn Halleck, a 25-year-old filmmaker who is about to release a three-part short movie called "./ Sigma_001" which is about a sentient AI being, and uses AI from conception to marketing and distribution.
"It's not just one tool, it's sort of sprinkled throughout the workflow process," he tells AFP on the sidelines of a panel on AI.
This ranges from asking ChatGPT what a character could be like, what her backstory is, and "riffing" off that to create ideas.
Telling an anecdote about a showrunner who hires writers by giving them the same prompt as he gives ChatGPT and seeing if they perform better, he argues the "bar has been raised" to come up with great ideas.
But while some assistant roles may disappear, he believes a human director remains essential.
"You still have to come up with the ideas, you have to create the prompts and curate the answers."
- Deepfake technology -
The world's leading film festival, taking place on the French Riviera, got a hefty dose of AI with a lengthy scene de-aging Harrison Ford, 80, in "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny".
While producers have ruled out using AI to keep the role going, actors like Tom Hanks believe it will allow him to keep acting long after his death.
Hanks is currently being de-aged in his upcoming movie "Here", with help from deepfake, face-swapping technology from AI firm Metaphysic.
The company's co-founder Tom Graham says technology has bridged the so-called "uncanny valley" -- the visceral human rejection of less-than-realistic androids -- and is now creating deepfakes where you "absolutely can't tell the difference".
The company is behind Deepfake Tom Cruise, a TikTok account that perfectly imitates the actor, and also created a hyper-real Elvis Presley who morphed into Simon Cowell and his co-judges on an episode of "America's Got Talent".
While filmmakers are brimming with excitement over the technology's potential, questions of its abuse hang over the session.
"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," Graham tells AFP.
"Unfortunately, I don't believe that you can stop the advancement of the technology because a lot of it is open source. There's not really anything to turn off."
His advice: "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."
- Voice cloning -
Magdalena Zielinska of ElevenLabs in Poland which claims to have created the "most expressive" AI voices available, says tools to check if a voice is synthetic will be essential.
Unlike the robotic AI voices of the past, models have learned to replicate the pace and intonation of human voices.
She says the tool allows directors to see how a scene will sound, or advertisers to see what kind of voice resonates most with clients. It can also be used to fix problems in post-production.
Zielinska says the technology could allow an actor to license their voice and do more projects at the same time.
A voice actor who fled the war in Ukraine was struggling to find work in Poland, and is "now making money", she says, after using the technology to clean up his English accent.
French director Mathias Chelebourg foresees that 90 percent of overall production will eventually be done by AI on movie sets.
"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," he warns.
T.Resende--PC