AI Scandal Rocks Oscar Contender – ‘The Brutalist’ Faces Backlash Over AI Use in Production

‘The Brutalist’ is a 2024 historical drama directed by Brady Corbet, who co-wrote the script with Mona Fastvold. It’s a collaboration between the U.S., U.K., and Hungary, starring Adrien Brody as László Tóth, a Hungarian-Jewish architect and Holocaust survivor who moves to the U.S. to chase the American Dream. His life takes a turn when a wealthy client helps him find success. The film also features Felicity Jones, Guy Pearce, and Joe Alwyn.

Premiering at the 2024 Venice Film Festival, ‘The Brutalist’ earned Corbet the Silver Lion for Best Direction and was named one of the year’s top ten films by the American Film Institute. It won three Golden Globes, including Best Drama.

Now all these awards might come under question due to the apparent use of AI in the movie’s production, at least according to online chatter.

The controversy surrounding ‘The Brutalist’ comes from its use of AI to improve Hungarian pronunciations in the dialogue and to create architectural designs for the film, which helped save money.

While this approach was openly discussed by the team, it has sparked criticism, as some people feel that using AI in creative work raises ethical questions and might take away from the artistry and authenticity of traditional filmmaking.

Editor Dávid Jancsó spoke to ‘RedShark News‘ and attempted to explain why AI was used in the first place. He explained that AI was used to perfect the Hungarian dialogue in the film. Hungarian is a notoriously difficult language to pronounce, even for Adrien Brody, whose mother is Hungarian. While Brody and Felicity Jones received coaching and performed well, the team wanted the dialogue to sound flawless, even to native speakers.

I am a native Hungarian speaker and I know that it is one of the most difficult languages to learn to pronounce. Even with Adrien’s Hungarian background – (Brody’s mother is a Hungarian refugee who emigrated to the U.S in 1956) – it’s not that simple. It’s an extremely unique language. We coached [Brody and Felicity Jones] and they did a fabulous job but we also wanted to perfect it so that not even locals will spot any difference.

Traditional methods like ADR (Automated Dialogue Replacement) with the actors or substitutes didn’t work effectively. Instead, AI was used to subtly tweak certain sounds or letters without altering the actors’ performances. This approach sped up the process significantly, as there was a large amount of Hungarian dialogue to process.

If you’re coming from the Anglo-Saxon world certain sounds can be particularly hard to grasp. We first tried to ADR these harder elements with the actors. 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.

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. You can do this in ProTools yourself, but we had so much dialogue in Hungarian that we really needed to speed up the process otherwise we’d still be in post.

The editor acknowledged that discussing AI in the film industry is controversial but argued it shouldn’t be. AI was used as a tool to enhance small details that couldn’t be achieved due to budget or time constraints, and similar techniques have been employed before in filmmaking.

It is controversial in the industry to talk about AI, but it shouldn’t be. 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.

The controversy over the use of AI could significantly impact its Oscar chances, as the film’s theme of artistic integrity clashes with the perception of AI use undermining traditional craftsmanship.

The Academy may hesitate to reward a film whose editor openly discussed AI’s role, especially amid the public backlash. While AI use in Hollywood might be more common than acknowledged, the openness about it could hurt the film’s reputation and its standing in the highly competitive awards race.

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