AI can read (and write) my lips. Great! Read me saying: ‘Stick your AI slop up your arse!’

Finally I am able blow raspberries in 47 languages

Photo © 2025 After Exposure Studio

Look up, what do you see?

Not an e-bow but aliens, perhaps. And it’s possible these aliens will speak pretty good English, just like in Hitchhiker’s Guide. No subtitles, or small fish, will be necessary thanks to AI.

For proof, go to the cinema. This week saw the UK premiere of Watch The Skies, a Swedish sci-fi mystery movie in the wide-eyed-kid Spielberg tradition. Did I mention it was Swedish? The cast is Swedish. Everyone speaks Swedish. Except they don’t in UK cinemas.

Pixel-mangling tech from “ethical AI company” (it says here) Flawless has been employed to reform the Swedish actors’ lip movements to match an English-language overdub performed by American voice actors. This means anglophone cinemagoers can sit back and enjoy the film as a native Swede might, without missing half the action by having to check the bottom of the screen for subtitles.

Nor do we have to endure the horror of classic cross-language dubbing that literally never matches the original lip movements. You know what I mean: like when a character spits out the internationally bland expletive “fuck!” but the English dub of precisely the same word, pronounced precisely the same way by an overdub voice actor, still manages to get the timing wrong.

Just like those Hong Kong street-fighting classics of the 1970s.

Flawless could sort out this sort of thing quite neatly, I imagine. I would also be fascinated to learn how they might tackle overdubs from a source language that is more dynamic in expression. Or uses an entirely different method of verbal communication, such as Khoisan click languages.

Heck, I’d be impressed to see them redub Klunk from Stop The Pigeon.

In principle, this sounds like a reasonable use of AI in entertainment that, in anything, actually increases work for voice actors. It’s therefore unlikely to provoke another strike in Hollywood. Even in Swedish Hollywood – or Trollhättan as it’s known (until it’s dubbed back into English).

But the pessimist in my pants is muttering that it’s just a matter of time before the voice actors will be dispensed with as soon as producers work out that the English overdub can be produced entirely by AI voices, using the digitally stolen characteristics of the original Swedish cast.

Judge for yourself how well it works in this Watch The Skies trailer: