Letting Cinema Speak Every Language: What Winning Time100 Means to Us

By Scott Mann, Co CEO and Co-Founder of Flawless

Being named one of Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential Companies of the Year is a massive honor. But for us, it’s not just about the recognition. It’s about what that recognition stands for. It means the world is starting to see what we’ve believed from the beginning: AI doesn’t need to replace creativity to be revolutionary. It can protect and empower it.

Why Authenticity Matters in a Global Screen Culture

Letting global audiences experience a film “as it was intended” has always been at the core of what we do at Flawless. For us, that means preserving the full creative and emotional intent of the filmmakers. Subtitles do the job, but they also pull your eyes away from the very place the story is unfolding: the actor’s face. So much of what makes a performance human is conveyed by the face. You lose that vital connection when your eyes are reading instead of watching.

Traditional dubbing has long been the alternative, but it’s often no better. Out-of-sync dialogue and performances that don’t quite land. It breaks the spell.

What we’ve built at Flawless solves that. Our technology removes the distraction without compromising the art. You don’t just understand the words, you feel them as the filmmakers intended. It helps you  step into that different world, culture and language. That opens the door to real empathy. That’s how storytelling travels.

Of course, there’s a kind of nostalgia to badly dubbed movies. They’re their own cultural artifact - a little like celluloid or VHS, they’ll always be part of cinema history. But what we’re building is a future where global cinema isn’t a niche interest. It’s mainstream. 

A Blueprint for Ethical AI in Film

From the start, we’ve taken the long road. We believe in building AI that artists can trust. That means doing the hard things, starting with an unambiguous clean-data foundation, with no stolen content or scraped data.

If AI is trained on content that was taken without consent, the tools are already broken. So we deliberately went the other way. We worked directly with Hollywood Guilds to build A.R.T.™, the Artistic Rights Treasury. It’s a consent-first platform where every creative decision, every edit to a performance, requires the performer’s agreement. 

That’s not just about film. That’s a model for how AI should work everywhere.

We also believe in flipping the economics of AI. Too often, value created by artists flows upward, fueling billion-dollar companies, while the people who made it see nothing in return. We believe in a trickle-up economy. One where artists benefit first. And where AI helps generate opportunity. This isn’t  wishful thinking - we’re proving it’s possible to innovate and protect artists at the same time.

What We Learned from "Watch the Skies"

The release of Watch the Skies was a milestone for us. It was the first AI-translated theatrical release, and we knew there would be questions, maybe even pushback. But what we saw was something else entirely.

The U.S. release surpassed everything we’d hoped for. Theaters embraced it. Critics responded and most of all - audiences showed up! But what really mattered to us was this: they were connecting with the film because of the technology, not despite it.

Years of work went into this movie  - from both us and the Crazy Pictures team. And to feel that connection land, to see people engaging with the story the way it was meant to be seen, was so rewarding. It wasn’t just a proof of concept. It was proof of value.

What Comes Next

The technology we’ve developed isn’t confined to our offices anymore. It’s on real sets, in real workflows and most importantly, helping real filmmakers do what they do best. We believe we’ve built something that’s going to reshape this industry - and it's happening now!

The same tools that redefined how we distribute films are now transforming how we make them. It’s not just about reducing cost, it’s about unlocking creativity, enabling filmmakers across the globe, and reinvigorating an industry.

At Flawless, we’re a filmmaker-founded company. We believe the future of AI belongs to artists. This isn’t a battle between technology and creativity. It’s a collaboration.