Dave Franco film Together pulled from China over AI censorship of queer couple
Body-horror film Together has been the centre of an AI controversy. (Supplied)
In short:
The Melbourne filmmaker behind Australian body-horror flick Together will no longer show the film in China, after a distributor digitally removed a queer couple from the film without his consent.
The Chinese distributor used what looks to be AI to replace a male actor's face with a female face, to avoid showing two gay men getting married.
What's next?
The incident has sparked concerns AI could make it easier for films to be censored internationally.
A Melbourne filmmaker has pulled his debut feature Together from China, after AI was used to make a queer couple appear same-sex in a "bizarre" and "bewildering" unauthorised edit.
Digitally animated steam was also used to obscure actor Dave Franco's body in a nude scene, amongst a range of bootleg changes.
Filmmaker Michael Shanks sold Together to global distributor Neon, which in turn sold the distribution rights in various countries, including China.
Loading...In an interview with triple j hack, Shanks revealed he had made the decision to pull its Chinese distribution, in conjunction with Neon.
He told the program he did not endorse the censorship of nudity but the erasure of the LGBTQI+ relationship was his line in the sand.
"I say — let's look at the bums!
"But I understand the reasons behind [censoring] that," he said.
"To completely change the gender of a character — completely change something that's a representation of a queer relationship as well as making the plot make less sense — is just baffling,"Shanks said.
Shanks only found out about the changes when Chinese journalists attending advanced screenings sent him photos from the cinema of a doctored shot, in a scene depicting a same-sex male couple.
In an apparent use of artificial intelligence, the face of one of the men had been replaced with a woman, making the couple appear heterosexual.
AI was used to alter a gay wedding scene to change one of the grooms into a woman.
"It's glaringly strange — this sort of homunculus face that's on this performer," Shanks said.
The remaining shots in the sequence had been cropped so that only one of the male actors was visible.
Long history of films being censored
Michael Shanks believes Together would have been the first international body-horror film with a theatrical release in China.
He said the distributor had pre-emptively tweaked the film to pass China's strict censor board.
Michael Shanks says he made the decision to pull his body-horror film Together from China due to censorship. (triple j: Samantha Jonscher)
This is not the first film to make headlines for censorship in recent years.
2024 blockbuster Oppenheimer was reportedly digitally edited in some countries, including China, to avoid showing actor Florence Pugh topless.
China's 2022 release of Fight Club for streaming also reportedly revised the film's original ending to depict the authorities triumphing over the protagonist.
And the Barbie movie was banned in Vietnam for political reasons.
Film still from Barbie (2023) featuring Margot Robbie. (Supplied: Warner Bros)
LGBTQIA+ communities often a target for censors
But in China, Hollywood and beyond, there is a long history of LGBTQIA+ themes being targeted by censors.
As recently as 1995, several films were pulled from a film festival in Tasmania, where homosexuality was illegal until 1997.
Together actor Dave Franco's equally famous brother, James Franco, criticised the Australian Film Classification Board in 2013 for banning the screening of a film with graphic sex scenes featuring a gay couple.
Dr Lin Song, who researches LGBTQIA+ cultures in China, said queer communities had faced heavy censorship in China for some time, and were adept at using coded language to connect on social media.
But he worried more film distributors could begin using AI to erase queer themes from films at a lower cost, further hampering the visibility of LGBTQIA+ communities in China.
"Once this becomes normalised, I do see this as an even bigger threat to the more public representations of queerness in China."
Chinese international student April* is bisexual and said she did not support the AI alteration.
"I think love is love — so I think I don't think [that] this situation is ok," she said.
Triple j hack has chosen not to use April's real name to avoid outing her to her family and friends back home, where she said being queer still carries much stigma.
But her friend, Lily, believed the AI alterations were out of step with the younger generations of Chinese viewers, whose attitudes towards LGBTQIA+ issues are slowly changing.
"I think it's getting better from the younger generation, we feel that if you love one person, it doesn't matter what [their] gender is."