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The notion of authenticity in the movies has moved a step beyond the merely realistic. More and more, expensive and time-consuming fixes to minor issues of screen realism have become the work of statistical data renderingsthe visual or aural products of generative artificial intelligence. Deployed for effects that actors used to have to create themselves, with their own faces, bodies, and voices, filmmakers now deem these fixes necessary because they are more authentic than what actors can do with just their imaginations, wardrobe, makeup, and lighting. The paradox is that in this scenario, authentic means inhuman: The further from actual humanity these efforts have moved, the more we see them described by filmmakers as perfect. Is perfect the enemy of good? It doesnt seem to matter to many filmmakers working today. These fixes are designed to be imperceptible to humans, anyway. Director Brady Corbets obsession with perfect Hungarian accents in his Oscar-nominated architecture epic, The Brutalist, is a case in point. Corbet hired the Ukraine-based software company Respeecher to enhance accents by using AI to smooth out vowel sounds when actors Adrien Brody and Felicity Jones (American and British, respectively) speak Hungarian in the film. Corbet said it was necessary to do that because, as he told the Los Angeles Times, this was the only way for us to achieve something completely authentic. Authenticity here meant integrating the voice of the films editor, Dávid Jánsco, who accurately articulated the correct vowel sounds. Jánscos pronunciation was then combined with the audio track featuring Brody and Jones, merging them into a purportedly flawless rendition of Hungarian that would, in Corbets words in an interview with GQ, honor the nation of Hungary by making all of their off-screen Hungarian dialogue absolutely perfect. The issue of accents in movies has come to the fore in recent years. Adam Driver and Shailene Woodley were, for instance, criticized for their uncertain Italian accents in 2023s Ferrari. Corbet evidently wanted to make sure that would not happen if any native Hungarian speakers were watching The Brutalist (few others would notice the difference). At times, Brody and Jones speak in Hungarian in the film, but mostly they speak in Hungarian-accented English. According to Corbet, Respeecher was not used for that dialogue. Lets say that for Corbet this will to perfection, with the time and expense it entailed, was necessary to his process, and that having the voice-overs in translated Hungarian-accented English might have been insultingly inauthentic to the people of Hungary, making it essential that the movie sound, at all times, 100% correct when Hungarian was spoken. Still, whether the Hungarian we hear in The Brutalist is absolutely perfect is not the same as it being completely authentic, since it was never uttered as we hear it by any human being. And, as it turns out, it was partially created in reaction to something that doesnt exist. In his interview with the Los Angeles Times, Corbet said that he would never have done it any other way, recounting when he and his daughter were watching North by Northwest and theres a sequence at the U.N., and my daughter is half-Norwegian, and two characters are speaking to each other in [air quotes] Norwegian. My daughter said: ‘Theyre speaking gibberish.’ And I think thats how we used to paint people brown, right? And, I think that for me, thats a lot more offensive than using innovative technology and really brilliant engineers to help us make something perfect. But there is no scene in Alfred Hitchcocks 1959 film North by Northwest set at the United Nations or anywhere else in which two characters speak fake Norwegian or any other faked language. Furthermore, when Corbet brings in the racist practice of brownface makeup that marred movies like 1961s West Side Story, he is doing a further disservice to Hitchcocks film. The U.N. scene in North by Northwest features Cary Grant speaking with a South Asian receptionist played by Doris Singh, not an Anglo in brownface. Corbets use of AI, then, is based on something that AI itself is prone to, and criticized for: a hallucination in which previously stored data is incorrectly combined to fabricate details and generate false information that tends toward gibberish. While the beginning of Hitchcocks Torn Curtain (1966) is set on a ship in a Norwegian fjord and briefly shows two ships officers conversing in a faked, partial Norwegian, Corbets justification was based on a false memory. His argument against inauthenticity is inauthentic itself. AI was used last year in other films besides The Brutalist. Respeecher also corrected the pitch of trans actress Karla Sofía Gascóns singing voice in Emilia Pérez. It was used for blue eye color in Dune: Part Two. It was used to blend the face of Anya Taylor-Joy with the actress playing a younger version of her, Alyla Browne, in Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. Robert Zemeckiss Here, with Tom Hanks and Robin Wright playing a married couple over a many-decade span, deployed a complicated youth mirror system that used AI in the extensive de-agings of the two stars. Alien: Romulus brought the late actor Ian Holm back to on-screen life, reviving him from the original 1979 Alien in a move derided not only as ethically dubious but, in its execution, cheesy and inadequate. It is when AI is used in documentaries to re-create the speech of people who have died that is especially susceptible to accusations of both cheesiness and moral irresponsibility. The 2021 documentary Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain used an AI version of the late chef and authors voice for certain lines spoken in the film, which provoked a striking degree of anger and unease among Bourdains fans, according to The New Yorker. These fans called resurrecting Bourdain that way ghoulish and awful. Dune: Part Two [Photo: Warner Bros. Pictures] Audience reactions like these, though frequent, do little to dissuade filmmakers from using complicated AI technology where it isnt needed. In last years documentary Endurance, about explorer Ernest Shackletons ill-fated expedition to the South Pole from 1914 to 1916, filmmakers used Respeecher to exhume Shackleton from the only known recording of his voice, a noise-ridden four-minute Edison wax cylinder on which the explorer is yelling into a megaphone. Respeecher extracted from this something authentic which is said to have duplicated Shackletons voice for use in the documentary. This ghostly, not to say creepy, version of Shackleton became a selling point for the film, and answered the question, What might Ernest Shackleton have sounded like if he were not shouting into a cone and recorded on wax that has deteriorated over a period of 110 years? Surely an actor could have done as well as Respeecher with that question. Similarly, a new three-part Netflix documentary series, American Murder: Gabby Petito, has elicited discomfort from viewers for using an AI-generated voice-over of Petito as its narration. The 22-year-old was murdered by her fiancé in 2021, and X users have called exploiting a homicide victim this way unsettling, deeply uncomfortable, and perhaps just as accurately, wholly unnecessary. The dead have no say in how their actual voices are used. It is hard to see resurrecting Petito that way as anything but a macabre selling pointcarnival exploitation for the streaming era. Beside the reanimation of Petito and the creation of other spectral voices from beyond the grave, there is a core belief that the proponents of AI enact but never state, one particularly apropos in a boomer gerontocracy in which the aged refuse to relinquish power. That belief is that older is actually younger. When an actor has to be de-aged for a role, such as Harrison Ford in 2023s Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, AI is enlisted to scan all of Fords old films to make him young in the present, dialing back time to overwrite reality with an image of the past. Making a present-day version of someone young involves resuscitating a record of a younger version of them, like in The Substance but without a syringe filled with yellow serum. When it comes to voices, therefore, it is not just the dead who need to be revived. Fords Star Wars compatriot Mark Hamill had a similar process done, but only to his voice. For an episode of The Mandalorian, Hamills voice had to be resynthesized by Respeecher to sound like it did in 1977. Respeecher did the same with British singer Robbie Williams for his recent biopic, Better Man, using versions of Williamss songs from his heyday and combining his voice with that of another singer to make him sound like he did in the 1990s. Here [Photo: Sony Pictures] While Zemeckis was shooting Here, the youth mirror system he and his AI team devised consisted of two monitors that showed scenes as they were shot, one the real footage of the actors un-aged, as they appear in real life, and the other using AI to show the actors to themselves at the age they were supposed to be playing. Zemeckis told The New York Times that this was crucial. Tom Hanks, the director explained, could see this and say to himself, Ive got to make sure Im moving like I was when I was 17 years old. No one had to imagine it, Zemeckis said. They got the chance to see it in real time. No one had to imagine it is not a phrase heretofore associated with actors or the direction of actors. Nicolas Cage is a good counter example to this kind of work, which as we see goes far beyond perfecting Hungarian accents. Throughout 2024, Cage spoke against AI every chance he got. At an acceptance speech at the recent Saturn Awards, he mentioned that he is a big believer in not letting robots dream for us. Robots cannot reflect the human condition for us. That is a dead end. If an actor lets one AI robot manipulate his or her performance even a little bit, an inch will eventually become a mile and all integrity, purity, and truth of art will be replaced by financial interests only. In a speech to young actors last year, Cage said, The studios want this so that they can change your face after youve already shot it. They can change your face, they can change your voice, they can change your line deliveries, they can change your body language, they can change your performance. And he said in a New Yorker interview last year, speaking about the way the studios are using AI, What are you going to do with my body and my face when Im dead? I dont want you to do anything with it! All this from a man who swapped faces with John Travolta in 1997s Face/Off with no AI requiredand face replacement is now one of the main things AI is used for. In an interview with Yahoo Entertainment, Cage shared an anecdote about his recent cameo appearance as a version of Superman in the much-reviled 2023 superhero movie The Flash. What I was supposed to do was literally just be standing in an alternate dimension, if you will, and witnessing the destruction of the universe. . . . And youcan imagine with that short amount of time that I had, what that would mean in terms of what I could conveyI had no dialoguewhat I could convey with my eyes, the emotion. . . . When I went to the picture, it was me fighting a giant spider. . . . They de-aged me and Im fighting a spider. Now thats authenticity.
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E-Commerce
The sky is about to get a lot clearer. NASAs latest infrared space telescope, SPHERExshort for Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization, and Ices Explorerwill assemble the worlds most complete sky survey to better explain how the universe evolved. The $488 million mission will observe far-off galaxies and gather data on more than 550 million galaxies and stars, measure the collective glow of the universe, and search for water and organic molecules in the interstellar gas and dust clouds where stars and new planets form. The 1107-lb., 8.5 x 10.5-foot spacecraft is slated to launch March 2 at 10:09 pm (ET) aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. (Catch the launch on NASA+ and other platforms.) From low-Earth orbit, it will produce 102 maps in 102 infrared wavelengths every six months over two years, creating a 3D map of the entire night sky that glimpses back in time at various points in the universe’s history to fractions of a second after the Big Bang nearly 14 billion years ago. Onboard spectroscopy instruments will help determine the distances between objects and their chemical compositions, including water and other key ingredients for life. SPHEREx Prepared for Thermal Vacuum Testing [Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech/BAE Systems] Mapping how matter dispersed over time will help scientists better understand the physics of inflationthe instantaneous expansion of the universe after the Big Bang and the reigning theory that best accounts for the universes uniform, weblike structure and flat geometry. Scientists hypothesize the universe exploded in a split-second, from smaller than an atom to many trillions of times in size, producing ripples in the temperature and density of the expanding matter to form the first galaxies. SPHEREx is trying to get at the origins of the universewhat happened in those very few first instances after the Big Bang, says SPHEREx instrument scientist Phil Korngut. If we can produce a map of what the universe looks like today and understand that structure, we can tie it back to those original moments just after the Big Bang. [Photo: BAE Systems/Benjamin Fry] SPHEREx’s approach to observing the history and evolution of galaxies differs from space observatories that pinpoint objects. To account for galaxies existing beyond the detection threshold, it will study a signal called the extragalactic background light. Instead of identifying individual objects, SPHEREx will measure the total integrated light emission that comes from going back through cosmic time by overlaying maps of all of its scans. If the findings highlight areas of interest, scientists can turn to the Hubble and James Webb space telescopes to zoom in for more precise observations. To prevent spacecraft heat from obscuring the faint light from cosmic sources, its telescope and instruments must operate in extreme cold, nearing380 degrees Fahrenheit. To achieve this, SPHEREx relies on a passive cooling system, meaning no electricity or coolants, that uses three cone-shaped photon shields and a mirrored structure beneath them to block the heat of Earth and the Sun and direct it into space. Searching for life In scouting for water and ice, the observatory will focus on collections of gas and dust called molecular clouds. Every molecule absorbs light at different wavelengths, like a spectral fingerprint. Measuring how much the light changes across the wavelengths indicates the amount of each molecule present. It’s likely the water in Earth’s oceans originated in a molecular cloud, says SPHEREx science data center lead Rachel Akeson. While other space telescopes have found reservoirs of water in hundreds of locations, SPHEREx will give us more than nine million targets. Knowing the water content around the galaxy is a clue to how many locations could potentially host life. More philosophically, finding those ingredients for life connects the questions of how `did the universe evolve? and `how did we get here? to `where can life exist? and `are we alone in that universe? says Shawn Domagal-Goldman, acting director of NASAs Astrophysics Division. Solar wind study The SpaceX rocket will also carry another two-year mission, the Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere (PUNCH), to study the solar wind and how it affects Earth. Its four small satellites will focus on the sun’s outer atmosphere, the corona, and how it moves through the solar system and bombards Earth’s magnetic field, creating beautiful auroras but endangering satellites and spacecraft. The missions four suitcase-size satellites will use polarizing filters that piece together a 3D view of the corona capture data that helps determine the solar wind speed and direction. That helps us better understand and predict the space weather tha affects us on Earth, says PUNCH mission scientist Nicholeen Viall. This`thing that we’ve thought of as being big, empty space between the sun and the Earth, now we’re gonna understand exactly what’s within it. PUNCH will combine its data with observations from other NASA solar missions, including Coronal Diagnostic Experiment (CODEX), which views the inner corona from the International Space Station; Electrojet Zeeman Imaging Explorer (EZIE), which launches in March to investigate the relationship between magnetic field fluctuations and auroras; and Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP), which launches later this year to study solar wind particle acceleration through the solar system and its interaction with the interstellar environment. A long journey SPHEREx spent years in development before its greenlight in 2019. NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory managed the mission, enlisting BAE Systems to build the telescope and spacecraft bus, and finalizing it as the Los Angeles’s January wildfires threatened its campus. Scientists from 13 institutions in the U.S., South Korea, and Taiwan will analyze the resulting data, which CalTechs Infrared Processing & Analysis Center will process and house, and the NASA/IPAC Infrared Science Archive will make publicly available. [Image: JPL] I am so unbelievably excited to get my hands on those first images from SPHEREx, says Korngut. I’ve been working on this mission since 2012 as a young postdoc and the journey it’s taken from conceptual designs to here on the launcher is just so amazing. Adds Viall, All the PowerPoints are now worth it.
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E-Commerce
Branded is a weekly column devoted to the intersection of marketing, business, design, and culture. Costco chair Hamilton Tony James caused a bit of a stir this week when, in an interview, he mentioned a retail category thats done surprisingly well for the big-box chain: luxury goods. “Rolex watches, Dom Pérignon, 10-carat diamonds, James offered as examples of high-end products and brands that have fit into a discount-club model more typically associated with buying staples in bulk. Affluent people, he explained, love a good deal. Courting that group may be particularly timely right nowand not just for Costco. According to a recent report from research firm Moodys Analytics, the top 10% of U.S. earners (with household incomes of $250,000 and up) now account for almost 50% of all spending; 30 years ago, they accounted for 36%. Moodys calculates that spending by this top group contributes about one-third to U.S. gross domestic product. While that reflects a serious squeeze further down the income ladder, where the price of eggs and other basics remain high, it also suggests that the comparatively well-off not only have money to spend, but theyre spending it. As of September, the affluent had increased their spending 12% over the prior year, while working-class and middle-class households had spent less. Thats having a clear effect on such sectors as travel, where the affluent have always been part of the mix but are now even more important. Delta recently reported that premium ticket sales are up 8%, much more than main-cabin sales. Bank of America found the most affluent 5% of its customers spent over 10% more on luxury goods than a year ago. Theyre going to Paris and loading up their suitcases with luxury bags and shoes and clothes, BofA Institute senior economist David Tinsley told the Wall Street Journal. For discounters and dollar stores targeting lower-income consumers, this has meant more competition for fewer dollars spent. (Dollar stores have struggled, and the discount chain Big Lots has filed for bankruptcy.) Addressing that challenge by courting the wealthy isnt an easy move, but Costco isnt alone in trying. Walmart CFO John David Rainey told Fox Business that the retail giant has expanded its selection of high-end Apple products, Bose headphones, and other items sought after by more-affluent customers,” as part of a stab at upleveling the Walmart brand. Of course, it may not be easy for most bargain-oriented brands to swiftly pivot, but Costco does seem to have more of a track record of pushing a more upscale-friendly element to its image. James noted that Costco has long counted affluent shoppers among its members36% of them have incomes of $125,000 and higher, according to consumer-data firm Numerator. A Coresight analysis from a couple years ago found that Costco customers have higher average incomes than those who shop at rival Sams Club, and thats reflected in its brand and product variety. Costcos reputation for serving that somewhat higher-income demographic makes the chain more attractive to brands that target those shoppers as well, Morningstar analyst Zain Akbari told CNBC. And of course it doesnt hurt that the chain has famously been selling gold and platinum bars. (Its also worth noting that Costcos business is doing well in general, not just with high-end customersand its reputation seems to have benefited from its reaffirmed commitment to DEI as a sound business practice.) Weve always known we could move anything in volume if the quality was good and the price was great, Costco’s James said, and that includes higher-end items that might seem like a stretch for a price-focused warehouse chain. In fact, he argued, its a natural part of the Costco brand: Both the company and its fans like to talk about the treasure hunt-feel of finding something unexpected thats not necessarily cheap, but a bargain. Were not interested in selling just anything at a low price, James added. If someone wants to buy a $500 TV for $250 at Costco, we want to sell them a $1,000 TV for $500 instead. Were always trying to find better items to sell to members, giving them a great deal. Were by no means a dollar store. It (almost) goes without saying that from a macro perspective, the massive wealth and spending-power imbalance underlying Moodys analysis points to potential problems that shifts in retail strategy wont solve: Consumer debt in delinquency is rising, and the whole economy is vulnerable if splurging by the affluent were to plummet. So while retailers will likely continue to chase after wealthier customers, the majority of consumers are left to treasure hunt for reasonably priced eggs.
Category:
E-Commerce
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