Yahoo Movies Could The Brutalist's AI controversy stop its march to Oscars victory?
Historical epic The Brutalist was hoping to be this year's Oppenheimer at the Oscars. But a new story about the film's use of AI could scupper its chances.
This week, UK movie audiences will finally get chance to experience The Brutalist. Brady Corbet's towering epic about a Hungarian immigrant and the dark side of the American Dream has been hoovering up awards — including three at the Golden Globes — and seems like a fairly safe bet to win Best Picture at the Oscars.
Or, at least, it did seem like a safe bet. The Brutalist has come under fire in recent days for surprising revelations about its use of generative AI tech in a number of areas. AI is a hot-button issue in Hollywood and was at the heart of the push-and-pull between creatives and studios that fired up strike action from both writers and actors in 2023.
Against this backdrop, it's surprising to see one of the most widely acclaimed and beloved Hollywood movies of the year — it has a 93% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes — dragged into the debate. So how and why did we get here?
How did The Brutalist use AI?
It's important to note that The Brutalist's use of AI was, as far as we know, limited to just a few specific scenarios. According to an interview with the film's editor Dávid Jancsó for RedShark News, AI technology was deployed to tweak the Hungarian accents used by central cast members including Best Actor frontrunner Adrien Brody and Felicity Jones. The Wrap reported that this applied to just a single sequence, involving the narration of a letter.
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"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," said Jancsó. The editor, a native Hungarian, used his own voice to enhance the actors' performance and, although this could be done manually, he said the film turned to AI to "speed up the process, otherwise we'd still be in post". Ukrainian AI company Respeecher came into the production and, according to the article, both Brody and Jones were "fully onboard with the process".
Respeecher, it should be noted, is also credited on a number of other major movies, including fellow awards contender Emilia Pérez and Robbie Williams biopic Better Man — as well as last year's Oscar nominee Nyad. Their team has also been involved with numerous Star Wars projects, recreating Darth Vader for Obi-Wan Kenobi and Luke Skywalker for both The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett.
The other area in which The Brutalist deployed AI techniques was for the final epilogue scenes, in which the Venice Biennale hosts an exhibition of work produced by Brody's character. According to the RedShark News piece, AI was used here "to conjure a series of architectural drawings and finished buildings in the style of the fictional architect".
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Jancsó mounted a defence of the movie's use of AI, saying that "it is controversial in the industry to talk about AI, but it shouldn't be". He added: "We should be having a very open discussion about what tools AI can provide us with. There’s nothing in the film using AI that hasn't been done before. It just makes the process a lot faster. We use AI to create these tiny little details that we didn't have the money or the time to shoot."
Will the AI controversy affect The Brutalist at the Oscars?
It's fair to say that a large number of voices in Hollywood are strongly against AI technology and see its use in the film industry as a threat to the livelihood of creatives. With this in mind, it's unlikely that Oscar voters will be hugely sympathetic to The Brutalist's use of the tech. Certainly, low-budget horror film Late Night with the Devil faced a huge backlash early last year for using AI in a similar way to The Brutalist — for several briefly-glimpsed image designs.
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However, there's an increasing acceptance in some corners of the industry that AI tech is here to stay and, actually, it's about using it in a way that doesn't impinge on the creative people who make cinema work. That debate doesn't begin with The Brutalist and it certainly won't end with it. Given the widespread use of Respeecher, in particular, voters might be willing to forgive.
There is a strange irony to this whole case though. One of the central themes of The Brutalist is creativity and, specifically, the battle between a person's creative vision and the cold, hard world of commerce. It's, in some ways, a movie about how difficult great art is to produce, which seems to butt awkwardly against the use of technology that, in some quarters, is perceived as cutting corners.
It remains to be seen how much this late-breaking controversy will affect The Brutalist at the Oscars, but it's yet another skirmish in the ongoing battle between Hollywood and the rise of a technology that will be transformative for the industry — for good or for ill.
The Brutalist is in UK cinemas from 24 January.
