“The Brutalist” has no shortage of accolades and award nominations.
The film won Best Drama and Best Actor in a Drama at the Golden Globe Awards, was nominated for nine BAFTA Awards, and is expected to be considered for future Oscar nominations.
But director Brady Corbet and star Adrien Brody have come under fire after the film’s editor, David Janso, revealed that AI was used to enhance Brody’s accent. .
“The Brutalist” tells the story of László Tóth (Brody), a fictional Hungarian-Jewish architect who emigrates to the United States after surviving the Holocaust.
This artificial emphasis is used in a scene in which Brody’s character’s letters to his wife Erzsébet (Felicity Jones) are read out entirely in Hungarian. Jancsó used AI tools from Ukrainian software company Respeecher to enhance interactions.
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Viewers were not happy with the news. “Don’t think it’s too reactionary to say this movie should lose the buzz it was getting at the Academy,” wrote one person on X.
In response to the backlash, Corbett said in a statement to USA TODAY that the two actors’ performances were “completely their own.”
“The aim was to preserve the authenticity of Adrian and Felicity’s performances in a different language, not to replace or change them, and this was done with the utmost respect for the craft.” The statement reads:
In an interview with video technology site Red Shark News published on January 11, Janso said it was difficult for Brody and Jones to perfect their distinctive Hungarian accents.
“I am a native Hungarian speaker and I know that Hungarian is one of the most difficult languages to learn to pronounce,” he said. “We coached (Brody and Jones) and they did a great job, but we wanted it to be so perfect that even the locals wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.”
Brody and Jones input their voices into the AI software Respeecher, and Janso also recorded his own voice to “tact with difficult dialects.”
“Most of their Hungarian conversations include parts of me speaking,” Janso added. “We were very careful to maintain their performance, mainly just replacing letters here and there.”
He said filmmakers could have done the process themselves using Pro Tools, but given the sheer amount of Hungarian dialogue, “we really needed to speed up the process. “I did,” he declared.
Corbett’s statement said Brody and Jones worked for months with a dialect coach to perfect their accents. “This was a manual process and was done by the sound team and response speakers in post-production,” he said.
A24 told USA TODAY in a statement that no AI was used in the English-speaking parts of the film, which make up the majority of the film.
Janso also said he used generative AI to create “a series of architectural drawings and a completed building,” and “created small details that we didn’t have the money or time to photograph.”
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Some social media users are calling for “Brutalist” to be disqualified from winning further awards at the BAFTAs and Oscars.
On X, one user used AI not only to “avoid paying visual artists for their work,” but also to “shame” manipulating an actor’s accent, a “fundamental aspect of acting.” I called it.
The objections arrived after the 2023 SAF-AFTRA strike, in which one of the central concerns was studios’ use of generated AI to replicate performers’ likenesses, faces, and voices. That was the case. The strike is over, but the fight to protect AI continues.
But “Brutalist” isn’t the only movie that elevated actors’ voices this awards season. Netflix’s musical film “Emilia Perez,” which won four Golden Globe Awards earlier this month, uses AI to create the singing voice of Carla Sofia Gascon and French pop star Camille, who co-wrote the film’s music. By blending these, Carla Sofia Gascón’s vocal range was expanded. And in Angelina Jolie’s Maria Callas biopic “Maria,” the actress’ operatic vocals are blended with recordings of the real star.
“Sometimes you can hear one percent of Angelina’s voice,” director Pablo Larrain told IndieWire. “Sometimes, not very often, I’ve heard 60 or 70 percent of Angelina’s voice.”
In an interview with Red Shark News, Janso acknowledged that talking about AI is “controversial in the industry,” but believes it shouldn’t be.
“We should have a very open discussion about what tools AI can provide,” he said. “There’s nothing in this movie that uses AI that hasn’t been done before. It just speeds up the process a lot.”
Every aspect of “Brutalist” was “driven by human effort, creativity and collaboration,” Corbett said in a statement. “We are very proud of our team and what they have accomplished here.”