Alex Serdiuk

CEO of Respeecher on The Brutalist AI Controversy

While some find artificial intelligence riveting and revolutionary, many in creative communities are filled with fear. Fear of unsustainability, fear of the future of the industry as a whole, and fear that disembodied computers are going to make jobs obsolete while causing irreversible damage to the planet in the process.

AI has come a long way since we first saw Will Smith eating that bowl of spaghetti, even making it to this year’s Oscars ceremony.

Films like Emilia Perez and The Brutalist came under fire for their use of AI to amplify the vocal performances of their actors, raising questions about transparency and ethical practices.

That leads me to today’s guest, Alex Serdiuk, the CEO of the Emmy-award-winning Ukrainian company Respeecher. This is the AI technology used to enhance Adrien Brody’s Hungarian dialogue and synthesize a young Luke Skywalker’s voice in The Mandalorian.

Unlike other AI companies, however, Respeecher prides itself on adhering to a strict code of ethics that includes transparency, actor consent, and union consultation.

I feel ambivalent towards the AI of it all, but as someone who faces my fears and follows my curiosities, it was time to poke the hornet’s nest.

Tune in!

xx cg

“We are taking from the humans what they do best: They add, they perform, and we applied technology to remove the limitation of a human being tied to a particular voice.”

- Alex Serdiuk

Episode Transcript