The acclaimed A24 film The Brutalist is currently under controversy for its use of an AI tool in the making of the three-hour epic.
The Brady Corbert-directed movie is currently considered one of the frontrunners to win Best Picture at the Oscars and is expected to be one of the most nominated films when the list of nominees gets announced this January 23.
The Brutalist's Use of AI Tool Explained
In a recent interview, The Brutalist editor Dávid Jancsó admitted that they used an AI tool called Respeecher to improve the authenticity of the Hungarian dialogues of Adrien Brody and Felicity Jones.
"I am a native Hungarian speaker and I know that it is one of the most difficult languages to learn to pronounce. It’s an extremely unique language," he explained.
"We coached [Brody and Jones] and they did a fabulous job but we also wanted to perfect it so that not even locals will spot any difference."
Jancsó shared that they "first tried to ADR these harder elements with the actors" and "then we tried to ADR them completely with other actors but that just didn’t work. So we looked for other options of how to enhance it."
Brody and Jones recorded their voices in the AI software to implement the tool to fix their Hungarian dialogues.
"Most of their Hungarian dialogue has a part of me talking in there. We were very careful about keeping their performances. It’s mainly just replacing letters here and there," the editor added.
In addition, Jancsó also revealed that generative AI was used in the final sequence of the film to create a "series of architectural drawings and finished buildings."
Brady Corbet Responds to The Brutalist AI Controversy
Ever since Jancsó admitted the use of AI in the making of the film, it has become a subject of online discourse as a lot of movie fans expressed their disappointment.
Some have also questioned whether The Brutalist is still worthy to win Best Picture as well as Best Actor for Brody, who is one of the frontrunners in the category.
Corbet has released a statement in response to the film's AI controversy and set the record straight.
"Adrien and Felicity’s performances are completely their own. They worked for months with dialect coach Tanera Marshall to perfect their accents. Innovative Respeecher technology was used in Hungarian language dialogue editing only, specifically to refine certain vowels and letters for accuracy. No English language was changed," the filmmaker explained.
"This was a manual process, done by our sound team and Respeecher in post-production. The aim was to preserve the authenticity of Adrien and Felicity’s performances in another language, not to replace or alter them and done with the utmost respect for the craft."
Regarding the alleged use of generative AI in the film's final sequence, Corbet also clarified, "[The Brutalist production designer] Judy Becker and her team did not use AI to create or render any of the buildings."
"All images were hand-drawn by artists. To clarify, in the memorial video featured in the background of a shot, our editorial team created pictures intentionally designed to look like poor digital renderings circa 1980."
What do you think of the film's AI controversy? Let us know in the comments!
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