As it’s revealed that director Brady Corbet used AI in the making of The Brutalist, stories are emerging that it could hurt the film’s Oscar chances.
As recently as last week, it was widely agreed that Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist was emerging as the major contender for this year’s Best Picture Oscar. Since the epic drama’s Hungarian editor Dávid Jancsó confirmed that the film used AI in at least two key areas, however, there’s a growing feeling that some Academy voters may respond negatively.
In a recent interview with the filmmaking website Redshark, Jancsó revealed that the film used the AI software Respeecher to alter the actors’ Hungarian accents, stating:
“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.”
He also confirmed that MidJourney was used to create the design for a building late in the film’s story, although a human artist was then used to develop the design further. Jancsó admitted that the process would cause controversy, but argued that the industry needs to move forward, saying:
“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 Brutalist was made for just $10m, and if nothing else, it’s perhaps understandable that a small-scale production with major ambitions would find AI appealing. The Hollywood film industry is in a sensitive place right now, though, not least because of the awful damage that has been caused by the California wildfires. With film production in Los Angeles falling every year, a lot of Academy voters are rightly touchy about human jobs disappearing (the 2023 Hollywood strikes were partly about the impact of AI). World Of Reel is claiming that among those working in the film industry, the story is ‘a big deal’ and after 24 hours, ‘the controversy hasn’t subsided’.
Just how far this story will run we don’t yet know, but it could yet prove to be another chapter in the ongoing difficulties with the film industry and its uneasy acceptance of AI.
The Brutalist releases in the UK courtesy of A24 later this week.