If you’ve been keeping an eye on the awards race (or maybe even if you haven’t), you’ve probably heard of The Brutalist and Emilia Perez. Both films have been scoring big with nominations and wins, including a major haul at the Golden Globes this month.
Things just got ~spicy~ though, with both movies now caught up in an AI controversy.
First up: The Brutalist. This period drama has come under fire this week for using AI to tweak the Hungarian accents of its actors in post-production — and even create some of the film’s final images.
As The Hollywood Reporter reveals, the film’s editor, Dávid Jancsó, a native Hungarian speaker, explained that certain tweaks were made to enhance the accuracy of Hungarian vowels and consonants.
“I am a native Hungarian speaker and I know that it is one of the most difficult languages to learn to pronounce,” he said.
“If you’re coming from the Anglo-Saxon world certain sounds can be particularly hard to grasp.”
Cue the internet backlash, with some people calling for the film to be disqualified from awards consideration over this AI use.
Naturally, director Brady Corbet had to step in. He pointed out that the film’s stars, Adrian Brody and Felicity Jones, spent months working with a dialect coach to nail their Hungarian accents — and that the AI was only used to fine-tune their performances, not replace them.
“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,” Corbet said in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter on Monday.
“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.”
Not long after, Emilia Perez came under controversy for adopting AI voice cloning tools.
As reported by The Guardian, the film’s re-recording mixer Cyril Holtz told interviewers at the Cannes Film Festival that AI cloning was used to enhance the singing voice of lead actor Karla Sofía Gascón.
He said the production utilised Respeecher to blend their singing with that of Camille, the French pop star who co-wrote the film’s score.
But that’s not all, because popular screenwriter Paul Schrader — who you might know for writing the films American Gigolo, Taxi Driver, and Raging Bull — also penned his thoughts about using AI in film this week.
In a Facebook post, he shared his experience after asking ChatGPT for film ideas in the style of himself and other writers like Quentin Tarantino, Martin Scorcese, and Steven Spielberg.
“I’m stunned,” Schrader wrote.
“Every idea ChatGPT came up with (in a few seconds) was good. And original. And fleshed out.
“Why should writers sit around for months searching for a good idea when AI can provide one in seconds?”
So, where does that leave us? AI is clearly making waves, but the jury’s still out on what this means for film and the creative arts.
For now, as the Oscars draw closer, we’ll be watching to see how this all plays out.
Lead image source: IMDb
The post Two Oscars Frontrunners Face Backlash Over AI Use: ‘It’s A Slippery Slope’ appeared first on PEDESTRIAN.TV .
