Two-time CIO 100 winner Ostertag also details Heineken’s unique interpretation of digital transformation, and how it’ll shape the strategy in 2025 and beyond. Watch the full video below for more insights. On a fundamental tech fix: When I joined Heineken in 2019, it was clear that big changes were needed, starting with the positioning and understanding of the tech function at the time. Like in many other companies, it was seen as a cost factor. The technology function was under finance, and we weren’t at the same table with the other key leaders in the company, on a global, regional, or even a local level. And that had an impact because the IT strategy wasn’t fully integrated and connected to the overall enterprise business strategy of the company. Another key reason why a change was needed was we were coming from a very fragmented technology landscape. We had 3,500 business platforms and solutions in the company, 45 ERP solutions globally, and we had no real consistent standardized view on where we were, or tech landscape where we wanted to be. So based on that, a lot of things have happened since 2019. For instance, we have a new corporate function called the digital technology function where we’re now at the table, and we’re represented with leaders like myself and those in the operating companies. The strategy is now fully connected and integrated to the business strategy. On a digital framework: The number-one priority is about people and having the right people with the right capabilities in place. We really put a lot of effort in digital upscaling not only within the digital tech function, but also in the business on all levels, inclusive of senior leaders. And then there’s quite a shift in the company toward hubs, where we leverage the power of them for different purposes. If you continue in this vein, other things we’re doing are digitizing our route to consumer, and creating value for the business by leveraging data and data analytics. And then we’re simplifying and automating our processes with AI. So we’re focusing on establishing what we call a secure digital backbone, which is a full modernization of our technology landscape that’s geared to our focus on our customers and value creation. source

By Jade Martinez-Pogue ( January 3, 2025, 2:01 PM EST) — Influencer marketing and social media management software services company Later on Friday announced plans to buy everyday influencer platform Mavely in a $250 million deal…. Law360 is on it, so you are, too. A Law360 subscription puts you at the center of fast-moving legal issues, trends and developments so you can act with speed and confidence. Over 200 articles are published daily across more than 60 topics, industries, practice areas and jurisdictions. A Law360 subscription includes features such as Daily newsletters Expert analysis Mobile app Advanced search Judge information Real-time alerts 450K+ searchable archived articles And more! Experience Law360 today with a free 7-day trial. source

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More Xthings announced that its Ulticam security camera brand has a new model out today: the Ulticam IQ Floodlight, an edge AI-powered home security camera. The company also plans to showcase two additional cameras, Ulticam IQ, an outdoor spotlight camera, and Ulticam Dot, a portable, wireless security camera. All three cameras offer free cloud storage (seven days rolling) and subscription-free edge AI-powered person detection and alerts. The AI at the edge means that it doesn’t have to go out to an internet-connected data center to tap AI computing to figure out what is in front of the camera. Rather, the processing for the AI is built into the camera itself, and that sets a new standard for value and performance in home security cameras. It can identify people, faces and vehicles. CES 2025 attendees can experience Ulticam’s entire lineup at Pepcom’s Digital Experience event on January 6, 2025, and at the Venetian Expo, Halls A-D, booth #51732, from January 7 to January 10, 2025. These new security cameras will be available for purchase online in the U.S. in Q1 and Q2 2025 at U-tec.com, Amazon, and Best Buy. The Ulticam IQ Series: smart edge AI-powered home security cameras Ulticam IQ home security camera. The Ulticam IQ Series, which includes IQ and IQ Floodlight, takes home security to the next level with the most advanced AI-powered recognition. Among the very first consumer cameras to use edge AI, the IQ Series can quickly and accurately identify people, faces and vehicles, without uploading video for server-side processing, which improves speed, accuracy, security and privacy. Additionally, the Ulticam IQ Series is designed to improve over time with over-the-air updates that enable new AI features. Both cameras offer free cloud storage (7 days rolling) and 8GB of built-in storage, expandable up to 128 GB with SD cards for additional recording capacity and dual-layer recording. Ulticam IQ Series security cameras are weatherproof and designed for reliable outdoor performance in any environment, day or night, with exceptional 2K Quad HD image quality (4K Ultra HD versions coming in Q2 2025). IQ features an integrated spotlight, while IQ Floodlight features two powerful floodlights and color night vision. Both activate upon detecting motion, deterring intruders, and enhancing visibility with more light. With the U home app, users get real-time alerts, live camera viewing, two-way audio, and searchable footage. The cameras also offer four customizable detection zones to help minimize false motion detections. Users also can choose from multiple connectivity options, including Wi-Fi, LAN, 4G LTE, or Power over Ethernet (IQ only). IQ offers a plug-in power option and IQ Floodlight is a wired camera. The IQ series will support integration with Amazon Alexa and Google Home at launch. The price Ulticam IQ 2K is $169 or $199 with optional 4G LTE connectivity. IQ Floodlight 2K is $199 or $239 with optional 4G LTE connectivity. IQ will be available in Q1 2025, and IQ Floodlight in Q2 2025. Ulticam Dot: The anywhere security camera You can take the Ulticam Dot security camera on the go. Ulticam Dot, available for $69, is a portable, wireless security camera that delivers peace of mind at home or on the go. Its compact, battery-powered, and weather-resistant design makes it easy to use anywhere indoors or covered outdoors—whether at home, in a hotel room, or anywhere in between—making it a dependable and versatile security solution. Like all Ulticam cameras, it offers free cloud storage (7 days rolling) and subscription-free person and motion detection. With 2K Quad HD video, night vision, and an ultra-wide field of view, Ulticam Dot ensures clear and comprehensive coverage, day or night. When connected to Wi-Fi, it provides real-time alerts, two-way audio, and automatic dual-layer recording. Dot also offers four customizable detection zones to deliver real-time alerts while minimizing false motion detections. Ulticam Dot is designed for personal security wherever you need it and comes with four replaceable AA alkaline batteries, 8GB built-in storage, alarm siren, a magnetic base for mounting on metal surfaces, and peel-and-stick adhesive and screws for easy installation on any surface. Dot can stay in standby mode for up to nine months on lithium batteries. In use battery life will depend on camera activity and environment. Built-in Wi-Fi enables direct connection to your home network without additional hubs, and the U home app allows seamless control. Dot will support integration with Amazon Alexa and Google Home at launch. It will be available starting in Q1 2025. “Consumers are tired of being locked into costly monthly subscriptions, which is why Ulticam offers free cloud storage and advanced AI features without requiring any fees,” said Matthew Brown, Ulticam’s head of marketing, in a statement. “Ulticam is setting a new standard for value and performance in the home security market and we’re putting consumers first.” Ultraloq smart locks Ultilog Bolt Xthings also showed off its smart lock brand, Ultraloq, with two new smart locks at CES. The locks include the Ultraloq Bolt Mission UWB + NFC Smart Deadbolt, the world’s first lock with ultra-wideband (UWB) technology, and Ultraloq Bolt Fingerprint Matter, one of the first Matter-compatible locks to support several smart home platforms. Bolt Mission UWB + NFC ($399) updates the smart door lock with a precise, hands-free auto-unlocking experience. Using ultra-wideband (UWB) technology, the same technology commonly used in digital car keys, Bolt Mission senses the keyholder’s phone location with centimeter-level accuracy, determining both distance and direction of approach. This spatial awareness enables automatic unlocking as users approach from the outside and also prevents unintended unlocking when users are inside their homes. For added convenience, Bolt Mission also features NFC for quick tap-to-unlock functionality and automatic locking. It supports Matter for easy integration, voice commands with Siri, Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, and Samsung SmartThings, and connects directly to your home Wi-Fi via the U home App, eliminating the need for additional hubs. Bolt Mission offers lightning-fast unlocking in under half

00:00  Hi everybody, welcome to DEMO, the show where companies come in and they show us their latest products and services. Today, I’m joined by Jonathan Van Horn, he is the director of solution engineering at Flexera. But you go by JVH, so I’m going to be calling you JVH for the rest of the show. So welcome to the show. 00:12I appreciate you having me, Keith. 00:14All right, so what are you going to show us today, and can you tell us a little bit about Flexera as well? 00:17Flexera is the market leader in technology value optimization, and we’ve been in this space for over 30 years. We help organizations answer four critical questions about their entire Hybrid IT environment: What do I have? Where am I at risk? What is it costing me? But more importantly, What value am I getting from the technology investments that I’m making? Today I’m going to show you how Flexera customers are answering those four questions, leveraging Flexera One powered by the technology intelligence platform. 00:48Okay, so Flexera One is relatively new, we’re not going back 30 years to discuss that product. So what is this Flexera One? Who is that mainly designed for? Is it the CIO level? Is it someone in IT operations, security teams, network teams, everybody? 01:05We focus on three key pillars within every organization: technology, finance and security. So CIOs, CFOs, chief procurement officers, even CISOs leverage the value and data that Flexera provides to make that data extensible and drive additional value to key business systems like IT service management, the CMDB, IT financial management, even enterprise architecture, applications and SecOps. 01:29And what problem are you solving? This is the big question: why should a viewer care about watching this video — what problem are you helping them solve? And it can be multiple problems, too, right? 01:39Oh, absolutely. Organizations are sitting on a gold mine of data. The challenge becomes making sense of that data, but then also trusting the data to drive critical business decisions. So our customers are excited about our ability to aggregate these disparate data sources, aggregate, cleanse, normalize, contextualize, and even enrich that data to drive this decision making and provide deep insights using actionable technology intelligence. 02:09What would companies be doing if they didn’t have your platform? I’ve seen other point solutions, perhaps, that that address things like Cloud spend and things like that. So there are other finops programs out there, and there are other IT operations type platforms too. So is it that you’re just combining them into one? Or what’s your your big value proposition? 02:31As they say, the modern technology environments are all about convergence today, and even ITAM and FinOps are converging. This is made true by even analysts like Gartner and Forrester, who are saying that it is monumentally critical for organizations to manage this convergence. And it’s even been more proven out by the 2024 State of the Cloud report, where managing software licenses in a cloud environment is the number six initiative across all IT leaders — that’s up three spots and 32% in the last two years alone. So Flexera is not only the market leader here, but we are uniquely positioned to help organizations manage that convergence of ITAM and Finops to drive critical strategic business value. 03:17So let’s get into the demo. 03:18Excellent. So we’re going to start with the problem I talked about earlier, aggregating all of these disparate data sources. This is what Flexera does. This is fundamentally the challenge that organizations have, taking these disparate data sources, aggregating them together, cleansing, normalizing, enriching and contextualizing this data. The only way this is possible is through technology that Flexera provides, called Technopedia. It is the world’s gold standard for IT asset data, and we have dedicated employees who consistently populate this 4,500 times every single day. So what organizations are able to do with that information, very quickly they can identify their entire hybrid IT estate, so understanding what the hardware is, what the software is in their environment, but also contextualizing with, ‘Hey, what is the carbon footprint of the technology investments I’m making? What security advisories are tied to these individual pieces of technology that are potentially opening up my organization for risk?’ We also contextualize and enrich it with currency, information, understanding, end of life, end of support, obsolescence. These are things where the manufacturers are no longer supporting these applications, rendering them vulnerable. The other piece to it is, what do I have and bringing contextualization is we also can then tie the individual technical components to the specific offerings and business services that these companies are providing their customers. So being able to take a look at every business service, seeing the technology that’s supporting it, understanding the vulnerabilities and the contextualization around lifecycle currency is critical to achieving efficiency and effective management of these services. Now that’s the “What do I have? Where am I at risk?” As far as “What is it costing me?”, we provide an aggregated view of every piece of technology spend, everything from on-premise licenses, SaaS and cloud in one standardized view. So you can see exactly where those dollars are going from those investment perspectives. Then we take it even further by understanding the value that I’m getting. So now you can start to see from a FinOps perspective, bringing the cost and the risk aspects to these insights, understanding exactly where my dollars are being spent across the organization, understanding the potential license risk associated with it, and then also driving deeper insights. So I can see here, if I take a look at this new service we just released as an organization here, smart personal assistant, everybody’s trying to incorporate AI into the services that they provide being first to market, I can see that I have some compliance risk. I have spend in the cloud. I have spend that’s in SaaS. I have total technology spend here, and finance is driving a

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More Neil Druckmann, studio head of Naughty Dog and co-creator of The Last of Us, announced that Sony is working on a location-based physical entertainment experience based on The Last of Us. It will depict the experience in the infected undergrounds of Seattle, which was prominently featured in The Last of Us Part II video game. This is still in the proof of concept phase and it will invoke all of your senses, Druckmann said. He made the announcement at the Sony event at CES 2025. Neil Druckmann touts more media on The Last of Us at CES 2025. He also said that season 2 of the television show will debut in April on HBO and will be available to stream on Max. Druckmann showed a trailer full of violence and emotion from the second season of the show, which has been a major hit as a streaming series. He said the company continues to strive to be an IP powerhouse with original content. “We’ve been floored at how beloved The Last of Us has become,” he said. source

Organizations look at digital transformation as an opportunity to radically improve operations and increase the value of a product or service to the customer by embedding technology into the decision-making fabric and building automation into its functions. This involves the integration of digital technologies into its planning and operations like adopting cloud computing to sustain and scale infrastructure seamlessly, using AI to improve user experience through natural language communication, enhancing data analytics for data-driven decision making and building closed-loop automated systems using IoT. For the employees, this freed-up human capital helps to invest more time in activities that require human expertise, judgment and creativity, and obtain better work-life harmony.   Leading any major change initiative is a daunting task, particularly the ones in which the result is unclear, the turnaround timelines are vague, and the value erosion rate with time is high. In almost all these transformations, one must prove the justification for change and navigate resistance to it, and go above and beyond to develop the business case. When talking about leading a digital change, the level of all the above is many degrees higher. So the question that plagues any professional entrusted with or motivated to drive a huge change initiative is how to inspire innovation and foster a culture of excellence.   Acknowledging the challenges of digital transformation   Lack of precedence or an absence of suitable benchmarks for results could be limiting factors for a digitalization exercise. Though there are some common goals every organization might want to achieve, there is a unique benefit or advantage each organization will seek to differentiate them from competitors. The unavailability of such a precedent could pose difficulties in allocating resources to the initiative, predicting the outcome of the initiative and stating a timeline upfront for realization of the objectives.   source

By Jamie Hanley and Ryan Stieve ( January 8, 2025, 3:58 PM GMT) — In 2024, U.K. pension funds led the way in at least two U.S. securities cases, demonstrating an increasing willingness of U.K. pension funds, historically passive, to hold corporate wrongdoing to account and litigate to recover losses, and potentially encouraging other U.K. funds to pursue legal action to protect their rights…. Law360 is on it, so you are, too. A Law360 subscription puts you at the center of fast-moving legal issues, trends and developments so you can act with speed and confidence. Over 200 articles are published daily across more than 60 topics, industries, practice areas and jurisdictions. A Law360 subscription includes features such as Daily newsletters Expert analysis Mobile app Advanced search Judge information Real-time alerts 450K+ searchable archived articles And more! Experience Law360 today with a free 7-day trial. source

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More I have a confession to make: Even though I’ve been a tech journalist for much of my career and consistently rushed to embrace, or at least test out, the latest and greatest in personal technology, I’ve never quite found voice assistants to be useful for me to use regularly. Part of that was because the tech has so far been admittedly pretty clunky: Apple pushed the boundary by acquiring and releasing Siri back in 2011, and was soon joined by the Amazon Echo smart speaker and Alexa voice assistant back in 2014. While I tested and used both, I stopped after a few weeks in both cases because I found myself constantly having to “fight” with the voice interaction — pausing before I spoke a query or repeating myself too often, for example. I know I’m hardly alone, as numerous articles have been written over the last decade-plus about the shortcomings of both of those early voice assistants. But then along came OpenAI with ChatGPT, and its humanlike Advanced Voice Mode audio interaction launched — finally, after a lengthy delay from its first target date — back in September 2024. Many AI power users have remarked about how useful and helpful OpenAI’s ChatGPT Advanced Voice Mode is: able to scour the web for information and carry on full conversations, analyze and react to imagery uploaded to it, even to pause when interrupted and allow the human user to redirect or move the conversation to other topics rapidly — much like real human-to-human conversation. And more recently, OpenAI cofounder and president Greg Brockman reshared a post on X by AI power user and Wharton School of Business professor Ethan Mollick noting that it is possible with newer versions of the Apple iPhone to map its new “action button” to ChatGPT Advanced Voice Mode, allowing users to turn the voice on with one click. I already had Advanced Voice Mode available to me as one of the pinnable and customizable widgets on the top of my iPhone Lock Screen, but this requires you to actually look down at the phone and find the icon. Mapping Advanced Voice Mode to the iPhone’s physical Action Button — the small one, located on the left side of the device — seems like an even more accessible option that requires only feel to activate. I just enabled it and am hopeful it will finally lead me to use this admittedly amazing tech more often. Here’s how I did it: You need a newer iPhone, from 15 Pro and up iPhone 15 Pro iPhone 15 Pro Max iPhone 16 iPhone 16 Plus iPhone 16 Pro iPhone 16 Pro Max The Action Button is a new physical button located on the left edge of newer versions of the iPhone, just above the volume up and down buttons. When setting up a new one of these iPhone models running iOS 18 or later, the phone’s starting process should give you an option to select what you want to use the Action Button for. By default, it is set to “silence” your iPhone’s ringer and notification sounds. However, if you already set up your iPhone and didn’t get this option or use it, don’t fear! You can still adjust it later. Here’s how. Download the official ChatGPT iOS app from the App Store It’s available here. While free ChatGPT users can still access it, there is a variable monthly limit on how many times they can call up Advanced Voice Mode. ChatGPT Plus, Pro, Team, Enterprise and Edu paying subscribers (starting at $20 per month) all have much higher or unlimited caps on the number of Advanced Voice Mode interactions they can access. Once you have the ChatGPT iOS app installed on your iPhone, proceed to the next step. Go to ‘Settings’ to re-assign the iPhone Action Button Tap on the “Settings” gear icon on your home screen. Then, scroll down to the second section of options and you should find “Action Button” listed third, below “General” and “Accessibility.” Tap it. This should open the Action Button assignment application/option on your phone, which is a screen where you can swipe between different options for what the Action Button will do when pressed. Swipe left to move through the options (and right to go back to one) until you reach the option labeled “Shortcut” (it was the ninth screen for me). Tap the up/down arrow selector screen below the text “Shortcut” and it should open yet another selection screen, this time showing a variety of Shortcuts similar to those found in the official Apple iPhone Shortcuts app. Except, if you scroll down below “Get Started” and any custom shortcuts you previously created in the “My Shortcuts” sections, you’ll see a list of third-party app icons that also offer shortcuts. Among them should be the ChatGPT iOS app. Tap this. Finally, this should pull up yet another selection screen showing various different actions within the ChatGPT iOS app that can be mapped to your iPhone’s Action Button. You want to tap to select the one that shows a small headphones icon labeled “Start voice conversation.” Tapping this should bring you back to the main Action Button selection screen, with Shortcut once again displayed prominently and “Start Voice Conversation” now listed as the action. After all that, you can finally swipe up to close the Settings app and long press on the physical action button. It should pull up the familiar Advanced Voice Mode screen showing a blue circle denoting the voice assistant. Begin speaking when you see this circle and you’re off to the races! If you are interested in setting up your iPhone Lock Screen like I have, to also have a tappable onscreen icon to activate ChatGPT Advanced Voice Mode, you can do so pretty easily as well. Read on for how… Once again, you’ll need to have the ChatGPT iOS app downloaded (duh).

Dell has announced a lineup of new AI PCs, combining cutting-edge generative AI performance with a sleek, streamlined naming convention. Drawing inspiration from Apple’s playbook, Dell’s new tiers — Dell (basic version), Pro, and Pro Max — simplify choices while showcasing the company’s push for innovation and user-friendly design. In addition to the name changes and new products, Dell solidified its partnership with AMD on Jan. 6 ahead of CES 2025 in Las Vegas. “To make finding the right AI PC easy for customers, we’ve introduced three simple product categories to focus on core customer needs,” Kevin Terwilliger, VP and GM of the Latitude and Docking business within Dell’s client product group, wrote in a press release. 1 New Relic Employees per Company Size Micro (0-49), Small (50-249), Medium (250-999), Large (1,000-4,999), Enterprise (5,000+) Any Company Size Any Company Size Features Analytics / Reports, API, Compliance Management, and more 2 Wrike Employees per Company Size Micro (0-49), Small (50-249), Medium (250-999), Large (1,000-4,999), Enterprise (5,000+) Medium (250-999 Employees), Large (1,000-4,999 Employees), Enterprise (5,000+ Employees) Medium, Large, Enterprise Features 24/7 Customer Support, 360 Degree Feedback, Accounting, and more Introducing Dell, Pro, and Pro Max The new tiers break down further into categories. Image: Dell One aspect of Dell’s branding that remains unchanged is how laptop sizes are indicated, with the new lineup including 13, 14, and 16-inch models. However, familiar brand names like XPS and Inspiron have been replaced — or streamlined, depending on perspective — into simplified categories: Dell, Pro, and Pro Max. Dell will include laptops and PCs for student, personal, or entry-level business use. Pro adds more powerful GPUs (from Intel or AMD), and NPUs for generative AI processes. Pro Max is intended for heavy-duty professional use and adds the option of AMD’s Threadripper processor. AI inference and training can run on Pro Max devices. “Gone are the days of ITDMs needing to study sub-brands and compare different feature sets to make the best decision,” said Charlie Walker, a product management lead for commercial client solutions at Dell Technologies, in an email to TechRepublic. Time will tell whether these categories — along with the further divisions into base, Premium, and Plus options — make it easier to tell which laptop is right for particular use cases. The first devices to use the new naming scheme are: The Dell Pro 13/14 Premium Copilot PC. The Dell Pro 13/14/16 Plus. The Dell Pro 14/16. Dell Pro desktops. Dell Pro Max 14/16. Dell 14/16 Plus & Dell 14/16 Plus 2-in-1. Dell Pro Max desktops. The new laptops will be available throughout the winter, with staggered releases depending on the tier: Dell Pro 13, 14 Premium, Dell Pro 14 Plus, and Dell Pro 16 Plus became available on Jan. 6. Dell Plus will come out on Feb. 18. Dell Pro 13 Plus will be released on Feb. 25. Dell Pro Max and Dell Pro 13, 14, and 16 Plus will become available in March or April. Walker said commercial and enterprise customers have been asking for model identifiers that explain product attributes. “Our new AI PCs will have a seven-digit model number that tells you the category, tier, form factor, shipping year, and CPU vendor – putting all the important information in one place – to simplify IT management, support, deployment, inventory and troubleshooting,” he said. Two new 4K displays are coming in 2025 The Dell UltraSharp 32” 4K Hub Monitor is appropriate for professional design work. Image: Dell Dell announced two new displays at CES: Dell UltraSharp 32 and 27 4K Thunderbolt Hub Monitors for professional use, available globally on Feb. 25. Dell 32 Plus 4K QD-OLED Monitor for entertainment, including AI-enhanced sound, available globally on May 22. SEE: AMD introduced new Ryzen chips for faster AI, plus a novel Radeon line for gaming and content creation, at CES 2025. AMD and Dell enter commercial partnership Dell became a commercial partner with AMD for the first time. This means corporate Dell PCs — specifically the Dell Pro tier — will use AMD Ryzen AI PRO processors. “We’re incredibly proud to collaborate with Dell on the next generation of commercial PCs powered by the AMD Ryzen AI PRO processors,” said Jack Huynh, SVP and GM of the computing and graphics group at AMD, in a press release. “Ryzen AI PRO CPUs are built to handle today’s workflows and tomorrow’s AI demands, and when combined with the power of a Dell PC, they create the perfect combination for the enterprise.” The partnership potentially comes at the expense of Intel, which has been relegated to Dell’s lower consumer tiers. TechRepublic is covering CES 2025 remotely. source

Hollywood is infamous for celebrity excess, but Tinseltown strictly controls one scandalous indulgence: swearing. Director Scott Mann encountered these constraints after shooting the thriller Fall. Movie giant Lionsgate — best-known for the John Wick, Saw, and Hunger Games franchises — wanted to release the film in the US. But the studio had big problems. Thirty-six of them, to be precise.  “They said it had too many f*cks,” Mann tells TNW on a video call from LA.  All those f-bombs were pushing Fall towards an R rating, which would slash the potential audience. To secure the PG-13 needed to extend the reach, those profanities had to go. How Startup Amsterdam Boosts Innovation and Growth at TNW Conference Discover how the City of Amsterdam partnered with TNW to amplify its startup ecosystem, attract global talent, and foster innovation that drives economic impact. Easier said than done. Reshoots would cost a bomb and post-production magic couldn’t scrub the dirty words. Thankfully, Mann had another trick up his sleeve. Quietly, the British filmmaker had been building a startup — called Flawless — that develops AI video editing tools. Fall provided a new field test: swapping f-bombs for gentler epithets. Mann asked the cast to record cleaner verbiage. Once the audio was ready, the Flawless system went to work. The software first converted the actors’ faces into 3D models. Neural networks then analysed and reconstructed the performances. Facial expressions and lip movements were synchronised with the new dialogue. The experiment proved successful. All 36 f-bombs were replaced without a trace. Well, nearly all of them. “I did one f*ck in the end,” Mann says. “I’m allowed one f*ck, apparently.” Satisfied by his restraint, the ratings board gave Fall the coveted PG-13. The film became a sleeper hit, grossing a reported $21 million against a budget of just $3 million. A sequel is now shooting in Thailand. Buoyed by his success, Mann began commercialising the software. The latest iteration is DeepEditor, an AI tool that refines dialogue and performances. The studio system DeepEditor can trim lines, insert pauses, or re-time delivery. It can even copy and paste performances from one shot to another. All the outputs offer Hollywood-grade 4K resolution, 16-bit colour depth, and ACES colour spaces. Early access applications for the tool are now open. A full product release is slated for the first half of this year. “It’s already altering where people are shooting,” says Mann. “And as it extends out, I think it’s going to completely transform how we make movies.” It’s also not the only tool that Mann wants to transform movies. Around a decade ago, he began developing another AI system for filmmaking. Like DeepEditor, it began life on a Hollywood set. The big break After progressing through film school, British TV, and short films, Mann got his big Hollywood break in 2014. Lionsgate had offered him the director’s chair for the crime thriller Heist. An all-star cast led by Robert De Niro was also on board. Mann relished the experience. “It was a complete privilege. We were very close on the movie and really happy with the English language version. But then I saw a foreign translation of the movie.”  Mann was “horrified” by the dubbing. His script had been rewritten and the actors’ gestures had mutated. The culprit, he discovered, pervaded across the industry. The problem stemmed from Hollywood’s established translation process. When films are dubbed, the scripts are typically rewritten to fit the original mouth movements. If the new lines still don’t match the old gestures, voice actors try to synchronise the two by twisting their delivery in unnatural directions. The results range from amusing to infuriating. “It’s really bad for the filmmakers and the actors, because it’s not the authentic representation of their work,” Mann says. “And as an experience, you’re not immersed if it’s not in synchronicity.” Mann began investigating novel dubbing techniques. He explored head scans, but the rendering lacked realism. The dubbing merely moved from one uncanny valley to another.  Losing faith in established VFX, Mann started searching beyond the film industry. He soon stumbled upon a promising alternative: Deep Video Portraits. Hollywood meets GenAI Unveiled in 2018, Deep Video Portraits was a big breakthrough for the nascent generative AI sector. The technique enables photo-realistic reanimation of faces using just an input video. Each facial gesture and lip movement can then be synchronised with speech.  The life-like results stunned observers — including Mann. “It blew my mind,” he says.  Mann reached out to the research team. They agreed to collaborate on a new technical test: making De Niro’s character speak German. The transformation, Mann says, was “like magic.”  “It was really understanding how a certain actor might say a certain line… You retain the performance, but you can alter the synchronicity.”  Expressions are digitally transferred from one person to another. Credit: Kim et al. Mann believed the technique was ideal for Hollywood. To build the idea into a business, he sought advice from Nick Lynes, a tech industry veteran. Together, the duo co-founded Flawless in 2018.  The startup’s first product was TrueSync, a dubbing tool that studios are applying to Hollywood movies. Among them is Venom: The Last Dance, a Marvel blockbuster released last year. Flawless also showcased a sizzle reel of AI-translated trailers at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. Still, not every client is ready to brag about the results. Threatening acts As the premiere of Fall approached, Lionsgate became anxious. GenAI was still a novel term back then, but unions were already concerned about the threats to performers. The studio feared the film’s visual dubbing would spark a backlash.  “They were going to pull the release if this wasn’t cleared up with Screen Actors Guild and there were mega nerves,” Mann recalls. “But luckily, we had planned for the consent workflows and [rights protections] early on.” Flawless built the plan on several pillars. All the data would be legitimately sourced — rather than scraped without permission like so many GenAI firms do. Every output