Film-Makers Say AI Do

From dog barks to digital sets, artificial intelligence is being incorporated into the works of storytellers and directors here

- John Lui

Local filmmaker Chai Yee Wei is only just dipping his toes into the waters of artificial intelligence (AI). But he is excited by its potential to give creators the ability to do things that were once deemed impossible.

"How do you get a dog to whine and bark the way you want? You probably can't," says the 48-year-old director.

Instead of trying to coax a dog actor into making the right sounds, he might turn to AI software that transforms a human actor's voice into any dog vocalization he can think of, says the man behind the mainly Hokkien-language drama Wonderland (2023).

And it is not just uncannily accurate animal sounds that AI can generate.

The science-fiction prequel Alien: Romulus (2024) features an appearance by the android character Rook, who looks and speaks like the late British actor Ian Holm. The actor, who died in 2020, played a similar android in the original 1979 film Alien.

The Holm lookalike that audiences see in Alien: Romulus was created with animatronics, computer graphics and an AI model that can transform an actor's voice into any other person's.

With AI voices, Chai says he will never have to worry if an actor is unable to attend voice-dubbing sessions, a common practice in filmmaking. As long as he has the actor's permission, he will be free to change dialogue after shooting or salvage dialogue tracks ruined by background noise.

The potential does not stop at sound. Visual effects shots can be created by software that can analyze and manipulate elements in an image, including separating characters from the background, therefore creating endless possibilities for landscapes and settings.

"This is potentially as disruptive as the birth of the World Wide Web. What used to take a whole visual effects team weeks can now be done by one person in a day," Chai says.