I’ve sure expectations each time I sit down to look at a Netflix documentary or docuseries. One among them, and I don’t assume it’s all that unreasonable, is that the story offered must be … maintain on to your seats right here, of us! … a real story, and supported by a preserved document of interviews, firsthand sources, documentation, and the like. Not, in different phrases, bolstered by archival footage and images that’ve been manipulated by AI in order that the director could make no matter level that they wish to make.
Sadly, the latter has really occurred with Netflix documentary releases a minimum of twice that I do know of since April.
We’ve already talked about one such occasion — it’s the usage of generative AI imagery within the true-crime doc What Jennifer Did, from just a few months in the past. The most recent instance of that is present in Soiled Pop: The Boy Band Rip-off, a just-released Netflix docuseries that dives into the shady dealings of music trade impresario Lou Pearlman.
Pearlman, who died, in 2016, was the pop music kingmaker behind teams like NSYNC and the Backstreet Boys.
“Along with sharing never-before-seen dwelling movies of your favourite baby-faced boy bands’ early days,” Netflix explains about Soiled Pop, “the three-part restricted collection pulls again the curtain on the glitz and glam surrounding the person chargeable for launching so many careers and divulges the crooked and complicated monetary scheme he used to construct the muse of his unstable empire.”
I wish to give attention to that point out of “movies” for only a second.
Lower than 5 minutes into Soiled Pop’s first episode, we’re proven what’s clearly archival footage of Pearlman seated at a desk. A gold document is seen over his shoulder. He introduces himself to the digicam — after which we cease listening to his voice, regardless that his lips are nonetheless transferring. “That is actual footage of Lou Pearlman,” reads textual content that materializes on the display screen.
Uh, okay, nice? I sort of assumed it was.
“This footage,” the wording continues, “has been digitally altered to generate his voice and synchronize his lips.”
Pearlman’s voice is now audible once more — that’s, the AI-generated voice is audible, matched with the footage of him we see onscreen. “I’m having an unimaginable life as an entrepreneur within the aviation and leisure industries,” Pearlman’s AI voice says. “And I’ve made somewhat cash too.”
The display screen then goes black, and new textual content materializes. These phrases that Pearlman simply spoke, we’re instructed, have been really written by him in his e-book Bands, Manufacturers, & Billions.
A few of you’ll in all probability roll your eyes at this (“What’s the massive deal? They disclosed that it’s AI. They usually used his personal phrases that he really wrote.”), however this however seems like slippery-slope territory for me.
My discomfort right here isn’t with the potential of the documentary tricking the viewers. How may it accomplish that, when the reason of what’s occurring was clearly given up-front? Slightly, it feels to me like every manipulation of the historic document — particularly inside the context of a fact-based documentary — units a hard precedent. You wish to use phrases that the man wrote in a e-book? Present an image of these phrases on the web page. You wish to use footage of the man? Use footage of the man.
Look intently on the first few syllables of the phrase “documentary.” While you got down to create one, you’re speculated to be documenting information and content material. Not manipulating them, even when that manipulation is in service of the reality. Let’s not speed up individuals’s skepticism about whether or not seeing is believing anymore, regardless that we’re clearly heading in that route.
