“What is important is that we get to live in a country that allows us to have a show like this,” Jimmy Kimmel said in his opening monologue that kicked off this week’s return of “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” after the show was pulled off the air last week. It’s a slippery slope, Kimmel hammered home, […]
“What is important is that we get to live in a country that allows us to have a show like this,” Jimmy Kimmel said in his opening monologue that kicked off this week’s return of “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” after the show was pulled off the air last week. It’s a slippery slope, Kimmel hammered home, when the government starts censoring material it doesn’t approve of.
Outside the United States, well, things are sometimes far worse. Over in China, for example, the theatrical release of NEON’s body horror movie Together is making headlines this week for a particularly vile use of AI that effectively erased a gay wedding scene from the film. AI was used, Dread Central reports, to turn the face of a male actor into the face of a woman.
“The edit does more than alter a brief moment of representation,” Dread writes. “The wedding scene plays a pivotal role in the film’s character development, the unfolding of its horror, and the overall narrative. By reshaping the sequence into a heterosexual marriage, this new cut fundamentally alters the film’s context and undermines the creative choices of its filmmakers.”
It was apparently Chinese distributor Hishow that made the digital alterations to Together, and the disturbing misuse of technology has prompted a response from US distributor NEON.
NEON said in a statement to Deadline, “NEON does not approve of Hishow’s unauthorized edit of the film and have demanded they cease distributing this altered version.”