No, ‘The Brutalist’s AI Controversy Shouldn’t Impact Its Chances at the Oscars

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No, ‘The Brutalist’s AI Controversy Shouldn’t Impact Its Chances at the Oscars

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Awards season, not unlike elections for public office, is a nasty game. The awards campaign, building up to the Academy Awards, has featured dissenting opinions from opposing candidates and smear campaigns. For the Best Picture frontrunner, The Brutalist, which has come under fire upon the revelation that Artificial Intelligence was used in the film’s production, the press is certain to have their guns out. Everyone agrees that Brady Corbet‘s grand, 3-and-a-half-hour epic about an immigrant architect is a technical triumph, but some will find its craft irreversibly compromised by the unethical integration of AI. Not only is its Oscar consideration in jeopardy, but Corbet wrongfully needed to defend his work. In the end, the AI factor is marginal and distracts from the film’s artistic merit.

‘The Brutalist’s Use of AI Is Threatening Its Oscar Contention

Adrien Brody and Guy Pearce talking in The Brutalist.
Image via A24

Since its premiere at the Venice Film Festival, The Brutalist has been marked as a big-ticket film. Corbet’s film, shot on dormant VistaVision and projected on 70 mm across the country, wears its monumental quality on its sleeve. The Brutalist also tackles weighty ideas, such as the collision of art and commerce and the interpersonal power dynamics between an artist and a financier. The film, which dominated the Golden Globes, winning for Best Male Actor in a Drama, Best Director, and Best Motion Picture – Drama, follows László Tóth (Adrien Brody), a Hungarian architect commissioned to design a center for the arts by the illustrious business magnate, Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce).

Met with critical acclaim, The Brutalist, early in its wide release in the U.S., has proven to be a mainstream cinematic event, an incredible accomplishment considering the film’s subject and length. Although other Best Picture contenders, including Emilia Pérez and Conclave, have succeeded in precursor awards, The Brutalist is recognized as the prohibitive favorite. However, the revelation by editor Dávid Jancsó that the filmmakers used AI tools from Ukrainian specialist, Respeecher, to fine-tune Adrien Brody’s and Felicity Jones’ Hungarian dialogue in the film to make it sound more authentic, has caused quite a stir. “I am a native Hungarian speaker and I know that it is one of the most difficult languages to learn to pronounce,” Jancso said.

Due to the film’s reported budget of under $10 million, the creative team needed to take any shortcuts imaginable, even if the practices were slightly unethical. The technology was also used to create a series of architectural blueprints and finished buildings in the film’s closing sequence. Along with every facet of society, AI seeping into the creative process in film has sparked outrage, with films like Late Night With the Devil receiving similar backlash in 2024.

‘The Brutalist’ Is a Singular Artistic Achievement, Even With the Use of AI

Amid the onslaught of criticism against The Brutalist, with many commenters claiming that it should now be disqualified from awards consideration, Brady Corbet recently released a statement regarding AI in the film. “Adrien and Felicity’s performances are completely their own,” Corbet said, elaborating that they worked with a dialect coach. As for the blueprint sequences, the director responded, “All images were hand-drawn by artists.” Corbet’s press tour and awards circuit are defined by his outspoken advocacy for singular visions, with his speech at the Golden Globes centered around the importance of directors receiving the final cut. “The Brutalist is a film about human complexity, and every aspect of its creation was driven by human effort, creativity, and collaboration,” he added.

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With Emilia Pérez also facing backlash for AI integration, the ever-growing, complicated technological format is clouding the awards race. We’re all gravely concerned about our inability to follow the advice of countless dystopian science-fiction stories that warn of advanced technology outsmarting human beings, but to disqualify The Brutalist from Oscar eligibility is a flagrant overreaction. For one, AI was merely deployed as an enhancing device, and the tactile nature of the film’s production design confirms its handcrafted process. Our heightened fear of AI has distracted us from the reality that most films use advanced technology in post-production, even with vocal modulation, with a recent example being Rami Malek‘s vocal modulation in Bohemian Rhapsody. By all accounts, Corbet and his creative team kept the utilization of AI under control, only using it as an ancillary tool. Additionally, it also doesn’t help that the public has access to so much information. Some of your favorite films of decades past likely contain unseemly creative practices.

The incendiary backlash against The Brutalist is typical for the Best Picture frontrunner, but this controversy speaks to an outsized discourse in the film world. By overreacting to The Brutalist‘s minor use of AI, you are discounting Brady Corbet’s genuine artistic craft that made the film such a noisy event in culture. AI is just a device, and it can’t conjure up something as deeply felt, rich, and sophisticated as The Brutalist.

The Brutalist is in theaters now.

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