A Putin generated by artificial intelligence stars in his ‘biopic’ in English and revolutionizes Cannes | Culture

“Inviting the studio to have Vladimir Putin appear in 20,000 shots was not viable.” With this phrase, the Polish director Patryk Vega —one of the highest-grossing filmmakers in his country, specializing in action films— accompanied the announcement a month ago that his new film already had a release date in 35 countries on September 26, including India and the United States. The surprising thing is that the project, previously known as The Vor in Law, has needed artificial intelligence to create and generate its protagonist: now the film is called Putinhas been filmed in English, is a biopic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, and thanks to digital help, analyzes 60 years of the president’s career. And at the Cannes film market, which closes on Tuesday, and which runs parallel to the festival, it has been one of the star sales and the work that has relaunched the debate: the audiovisual industry is using AI more than it thought. says.

Kinostar, a German company that distributes films in its country and is also responsible for selling films around the world, has received a multitude of offers and requests to view films at its office on La Croisette. Putin, they assure. For the general public you can access the two and a half minute trailer, where Putin wears a dirty diaper, at another point he engages in martial arts and finally faces Boris Yeltsin. He is also seen humiliating his ex-wife, Lyudmila Aleksandrovna Ocheretnaya, flaunting her affair with his much younger girlfriend, Alina Kabaeva.

The Polish studio AIO, which created the technology, warns that it will be a very close and personal approach to Putin, “recreating some intimate moments from his life.” Vega, who also signs some of his films as Besaleel, says in a press release: “The digitally accessible archival materials did not allow us to recreate it using a model.” deepfake that gave the film quality. So we spent two years developing artificial intelligence” that would allow them to have the protagonist on screen “without relying on a human model.” In The Hollywood Reporterthe filmmaker says he filmed the Russian leader using a Polish actor with a similar build and used artificial intelligence technology to “superimpose Putin’s face on the actor, creating a realistic effect in the highest possible resolution.”

Filming has taken place over the last three years in locations in Russia, Ukraine, Israel, Syria, Jordan and Poland, and runs until 2024. The bombings and fighting in Ukraine have been filmed during real clashes by Ukrainian teams. For Vega, “Putin It’s not just a movie, it answers a global question about the motivations and actions of one of today’s most controversial figures. My mission is to provide viewers with a User manual for Putin, with the aim of alleviating the fear and uncertainty that dominate the world today.” Vega (Warsaw, 47 years old) is responsible for films such as Pitbull, Women of the Mafia, The Plagues of Wrocław and Last Minute, and between film and television he has led around thirty audiovisual products, focused on action.

Putin has brought to Cannes the debate on the use of AI in cinema. Swiss filmmaker Peter Luisi He explained at the contest that he is in the post-production of his feature film The last screenwriter, written entirely by ChatGPT, which according to its author is the first feature-length script generated with this tool. And Luisi is not just anyone: co-writer of I saw your, nominated for an Oscar in 2007, has directed, written and produced eight films. The last one, the comedy Bon Schuur Ticino (2023), is the highest-grossing national title in its country for eight years.

Luisi started with a joke, telling ChatGPT: “Write a plot for a movie in which a screenwriter realizes that he is less good than the AI.” Then he asked her for characters that fit the plot, an outline, and finally the complete script. “The script is terrifyingly good, everyone is surprised by how good it is,” Account in Screen International. The protagonist, Jack, is a celebrated screenwriter, who feels his world falling apart when he encounters a cutting-edge AI screenwriting system. Although he begins to use it skeptically, he soon discovers that the AI ​​surpasses him in empathy and understanding of human emotions. The film was shot in January in the United Kingdom with British actors and lasts 76 minutes.

The debate in Hollywood is closed: it is being used ruthlessly, but there is fear of admitting it. Next Friday it premieres in Spain The last Late Night, in which it has been used to create, for example, a dancing skeleton for some posters. In The Hollywood Reporter, executives and producers They confirm that the problem with AI is its poor image in the public eye. “There are a lot of people who are using it, but they can’t admit it publicly because you still need artists for other work and they would turn against you,” says David Stripinis, a digital effects veteran, whose resume includes Avatar, Man of Steel and various jobs at Marvel Studios. “Right now, it’s a public relations problem rather than a technological one.”

On Saturday, in Cannes, the independent production and distribution company XYZ Films presented a compendium of AI-translated trailers for international films, such as the French Vincent must die or the korean Smugglers, to showcase the Flawless company’s TrueSync dubbing technology. XYZ and Flawless have created this digital tool to produce “high-quality, low-cost English dubbing” for international titles, which, when presented in English, would increase their sales. The first to be sold at Cannes with this version is a Swedish science fiction film, UFO Sweden.

One of the battlehorses in the last negotiation between the actors union and the Hollywood studios was the impersonation of interpreters with AI. Until now, artificial intelligence had never been used to build a protagonist. Yes for secondary, with truly calamitous results: in Prom Pact (2023), available on Disney Channel, in one sequence you can see a row of animators in a bleacher looking pitiful. Because one thing is AI and another is CGI images, like those of The Lord of the rings, to multiply armies in the battle of Helm’s Deep; those of Blade Runner 2049 (2017), where Rachael, the character played by Sean Young, resembled her 1982 version; those of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, where in 2016 this technique was used to resurrect Grand Moff Tarkin, played by Peter Cushing, who died in 1994; or the rejuvenations of the Irish and Gemini Man.

Even an industry heavyweight such as Charles Rivkin, president of the MPA, the association that encompasses the major Hollywood studios (including platforms), said last week at the beginning of the festival: “We see AI as a tool and we believe that it will unlock creativity and opportunity, that it will create jobs, not eliminate them,” as long as copyright is protected. On the contrary, a study that questioned 300 producers and team leaders in the industry showed that three quarters of respondents knew that the use of AI will lead to the elimination or reduction of jobs in their companies. In the next three years, it is estimated that around 204,000 jobs will be negatively affected, reducing their work or simply disappearing.

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