The Brutalist director Brady Corbet has responded to revelations that AI was used to enchance the performances of the film’s leads, Adrien Brody and Felicity Jones.
The film’s editor, David Jancso, has claimed that an AI voice tool was used on the Hungarian dialogue spoken by Brody and Jones in the hotly tipped Oscar favourite, to make it sound more authentic.
The Brutalist has already won three Golden Globes and has been nominated for nine Baftas. However, some film fan’s have even suggested that the revelation should disqualify the film from winning any future awards.
Corbet has since responded to the controversy, countering the accusations that the technology was used to improve the actor’s performances.
In a statement to The Hollywood Reporter, the 36-year-old director said: “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. 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.”
Corbet also moved to quash any speculation that the architectural designs seen in the film were also created using AI. [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.”
Corbet concluded his statement by saying: “The Brutalist is a film about human complexity, and every aspect of its creation was driven by human effort, creativity and collaboration. We are incredibly proud of our team and what they’ve accomplished here.”
In an interview with tech publication Red Shark News, the film’s editor David Jancsó said that Respeecher voice cloning software had been used to make Hungarian dialogue spoken by Brody and Jones sound more authentic.
“I am a native Hungarian speaker and I know that it is one of the most difficult languages to learn to pronounce,” said Jancsó. “It’s an extremely unique language. 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 said they used the AI software to help blend his own speech with the actor’s performances. “Most of their Hungarian dialogue has a part of me talking in there,” he added. “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.
Jancsó’s admission has since sparked uproar among film fans, as the controversy around the use of artificial intelligence in art continues to linger.
