“It will automatically integrate into movies.” As part of the documentary “Dubbing: Clone Me if you can”, directed by Tech & Co, Sarah Lelouch, daughter of Claude Lelouch, came to defend his vision of AI in the cinema.
Producer, director and coorganizer of the World AI Film Festival, an event that wants to honor AI in the cinema, wants to be optimistic about the emergence of this technology in the seventh art.
15,000 threatened works
But AI is still very controversial in the film environment, especially among dubbing actors. The last fear is replaced by clones created in vocal synthesis. The best known company in the development of this AI is eleven. The services sold by the company allow in particular to reproduce a voice of a few seconds of extracts.
Faced with the appearance of AI in the world of dubbing, we saw the birth of a world protest movement transported by the bent actors. This movement has its own French decline, called “Touche Pas Ma VF” (for the French version). In this group, comedians are compromised as Brigitte Lecordier (voice of San Goku Child and Oui-Oui), Thierry Didesses (Voice of Samuel L. Jackson) or Pascale Chemin (Voice of Commander Shepard and Tek & No).
According to the collective, AI represents a great danger to the Dubbing Actor profession. Its members explain that almost 15,000 jobs could be threatened in France with the use of cloned votes. A hypothesis shared by Sarah Lelouch, but also sees it as an opportunity:
The producer takes, for example, the “voice director” (voice director). She describes this profession as a person “who will guide AI, who will say that we must put feelings, there we must put emotion, there it is necessary that the voice is afraid, because it still cannot do it.”
“We will save a lot of time”
The generative AI is gradually implemented in several areas to optimize employee work. As for the cinema, Sarah Lelouch especially sees this technology as a lever to save time in the production of films, especially with respect to dubbing.
“I, there is a metaphor that I like. It is that at that time, when we lived in Lyon and wanted to come to Paris, we went there on horseback or in a car, we put eight hours (sic). And now there is the train, we put an hour and a half. It’s a great time except time,” explains Sarah Lelouch in Tech & Co.
But closing a voice also makes it possible to reuse it, even after an actor has left the profession. In January 2025, the movie trailer Armor He has been controversial. With Sylvester Stallone among its main actors, the French voice of its deceased historical duplication, Alain Dorval, was recreated using AI. His daughter, who is none other than Urorer Bergé, admitted to having been deceived by the production company that responded to the voice of her deceased father.
Cinema forced to adopt to?
Sarah Lelouch explains that AI has already reached the cinema. Hollywood has been the subject of several strikes in recent years in opposition to the adoption of technology. This did not prevent certain productions from having asked the AI, in particular to rework the voice of its actors. This was the case with the award -winning movie. The brutalist. The Hungarian accents of American Adrien Brody and the British Felicity Jones were refined using a technology developed by the Ukrainian company Respect.
When taking this example, the filmmaker argues, while the use of “ai allows even more the aroma to the truth” to a production. According to her, it justifies that “we are totally in a creation process.”
In 2025, Sarah Lelouch participated in the world organization of the World AI, an event in Nice that celebrates video creations in a totally or partially created way using AI. The project aims to be sustainable since a 2026 edition is already in preparation.
A legislative vagueness
Then the question arises about the legislative framework that supervises the use of this AI. The comedians, like Pascale Chemin, denounce an attack on intellectual property when algorithms appropriated their voice. Sarah Lelouch’s vision suggests that the development of AI is too fast to legislate its supervision.
Although optimistic about technology, it does not deny the vagueness that exists around the future of AI. “We do not know ourselves, and even those who are in AI, which will allow to do,” he says.
“Fight is losing energy”
Despite all this uncertainty, the director is still convinced that the transition to AI is inevitable. Observe a reluctance in a large part of the audiovisual world.
She also questions the work of the “Touche not my VF” collective by stating: “There, we are really walking when we do not touch my VF.” “I think that fighting (AI, note of the editor) is losing energy. Because the war is already lost, AI has won. Therefore, it is rather asking and how to do the artists at the center of these debates” filmmaker.
Source: BFM TV
