The word AI is completely useless now. The word AI has lost all meaning. It currently describes two completely different things.
Thing one. A sound editor uses a computer tool to fix three Hungarian vowel sounds for Adrien Brody in The Brutalist.
Thing two. A director types a prompt and a machine generates every single pixel and voice for a short horror film from scratch.
Both of these get the exact same label - “AI”.
And because they get the same label, people panic at the first one.
When the news broke about The Brutalist, the internet called the acting fake. They called it slop. They argued it should not win awards.The director had to come out and explain that the actors did the acting. The machine just helped them pronounce a few letters. But the headline was already out there.
This is the problem we are running into as creators.
We use a massive, terrifying buzzword to describe a very small, boring task. You use a tool to remove background noise from your microphone. Someone asks if you used AI. You say yes. Suddenly you are part of the great creative apocalypse. You used a noise reduction plugin. The fix is simple.
Stop using the buzzword. Start describing the actual job.
Did a machine generate the image? Say that.
Did a machine help you fix a bad audio recording? Say that.
Did a machine mix two singing voices so the actor could hit a higher note, like they did in Emilia Perez? Say that.
Specificity builds trust. Vague buzzwords build panic.
People are not actually angry at tools. They are angry at being tricked. When you tell them exactly what the tool did, the panic usually disappears.
I spent an unhealthy amount of time digging into this exact problem for my new YouTube video.
I broke down five movies and a television show to see what the machines actually did. From fixing one vowel to generating an entire scene.
The video is in production and will be available soon on my Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@shaggyrec
Warmly,
AL.
P.S. Knowing which tools actually save your video and which ones just ruin it is half the battle. The full editing and color pipeline lives in the mini course.