The Brutalist used AI for Adrien Brody's Oscar-nominated performance. Is that cheating?

Yahoo

22-02-2025

He is a front-runner at the Academy Awards, burning past his colleagues on betting charts over his critically acclaimed achievements in The Brutalist.
But unfortunately for Adrien Brody, this is the 2025 Oscars — where controversy seemingly lurks behind every title sequence. And when it comes to The Brutalist, the controversy is a slightly novel one: artificial accents.
As revealed by Red Shark News, director Brady Corbet and editor Dávid Jancsó used artificial intelligence from Ukrainian software company Respeecher to adjust Brody and co-star Felicity Jones's Hungarian lines.
And as the roles the two played as native-speaking, Hungarian immigrants earned them best actor and supporting actress nominations, it raises a question.
An acting award for an AI-aided performance? What gives?
"People's careers can really take off. From its studios, [to] directors, everybody involved in an award-winning film — they stand to gain," critic Rachel Ho said of the importance of an Oscar win.
"When there is so much at stake in that sense, we do need to be transparent about how AI is being used in a performance — that maybe isn't fully his performance anymore."
WATCH | Brady Corbet explains what it took to bring The Brutalist to life:
In Brody's defence, Corbet pointed out to Deadline that no English language lines were changed. The actual Hungarian language spoken in the film is minimal, while both Jones and Brody worked extensively with vocal coach Tanera Marshall to nail Hungarian inflections in their mostly English dialogue.
But it does foreshadow a trend. According to Variety, fellow best picture nominees A Complete Unknown and Dune: Part Two used AI to some degree in their production. And the Mexico-set musical Emilia Pérez, once front-runner in the best picture category and boasting a number of nominations for its actors, employed Respeecher as well.
In a French-language interview at the Cannes Film Festival, mixer Cyril Holtz said it was to help star Karla Sofía Gascón reach the high notes of her songs. The movie has two songs that are up for awards at the Oscars, while Gascón is on the short list for best actress.
As AI bubbled up as a new technology back in 2023, it was frightening enough to be a hot-topic in the SAG-AFTRA acting union's strike negotiations.
In the contract eventually drawn up, strict guidelines were put in place over when and how AI could be used: breaking down the use-cases into guardrails around "employment based-digital replicas" (AI used to alter or aid a performer already working on a project), "independently created digital replicas" (AI used to replicate an identifiable actor for a project they're otherwise unconnected with) and "synthetic performers" (completely artificial actors, not obviously based on any identifiable person).
Those safeguards reflected fears of performers being replaced by AI and famous actors having their likenesses copied against their will — or even resurrected after their death.
But while the contract dealt with more obvious and egregious uses of AI, The Brutalist's techniques represent a subtler application — which is far more in line with editing practices already firmly entrenched in Hollywood.
In the draft contract made public were two caveats: first, that all parties "acknowledge that the producers have historically used digital technologies to replicate or alter a performer's voice or likeness ... and may continue to do so." And second, that producers do not need to acquire consent from their performers when using AI to alter "pitch, tone, clarity ... or the voice of the performer to a foreign language."
Director Brady Corbet, third from right, appears with the cast of The Brutalist — including Brody and Jones, centre — at the Golden Globe Awards in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Jan 5. (Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images)
Neither Brody nor Jones have made any statements suggesting they opposed the use of AI, while Jancsó told Red Shark News both were "fully onboard" with Respeecher's use.
While fully virtual performers aren't likely to replace real actors in the immediate future, Ho said Brody's nomination and potential win could cement the practice of subtly improving performances with AI, without letting audiences know.
And when it comes to an art form like film, Ho said, that's troubling.
"Directors, actors, studios — it is a responsibility [of theirs] to give audiences the whole picture," she said. "We do need to have a lot more transparency, in terms of when these things are being used to create something that wasn't there."
AI or ADR?
But Michael Forsey, president of Toronto's Rolling Pictures post-production company, explained that ADR (automatic dialogue replacement) has been accomplishing much the same as this kind of AI since Hollywood's birth.
After a film wraps, engineers and editors will comb through dialogue — re-recording and prettying up factors as small as the pronunciation of individual letters.
He likened the process to auto-tune in music. Listeners largely derided that pitch-correcting tool as "cheating" when it became common knowledge, though it had been an integral part of the industry for years — and still is.
"If you're going to take an Oscar away from everyone who used something like auto-tune, then that's going to be a lot of Oscars that you're giving back," Forsey said. "It's cheating for a creative benefit.... We want [filmmakers] to do whatever [they] need to do to make a really good film, right? Because that's what it's about — it's about the film."
If AI needed to be disclosed, he said, ADR and a plethora of entrenched editing tools and tricks would need to be, too — and that would include virtually every film released. But it's controversial enough that organizers for the Academy Awards confirmed to CBC News they are considering making the disclosure of AI use mandatory for films submitted, instead of voluntary as it is now.
For those with a sour taste in their mouths, vocal coach Mark Byron Dallas said he understands. And there are existing concerns. Emilia Pérez, for example, was criticized for hiring only a single Mexican performer in a lead role. That led to what Mexican fans and critics called "unintelligible" line delivery, despite many of the characters ostensibly being native Mexicans.
Producers theoretically could have used AI to improve their actors' accents, bypassing the most obvious failings of not hiring native actors — or at least paying vocal coaches to adequately train them.
"The idea to actually replace that whole process, that is something that's unthinkable," Dallas said. "But I'm not going to say it's unlikely to happen in the future."
LISTEN | Will The Brutalist's AI use cost it an Oscar?:
When it comes to The Brutalist, though, Dallas said he doesn't see Brody's nomination as unfair. Since big-budget movies need big-budget names attached to them to draw crowds, hiring an English-speaking actor was likely unavoidable. And the subsequent AI cleanups were fixes based around largely physical limitations; having grown up as an English speaker, there are simply Hungarian tones Brody would be unlikely to ever perfect.
"It's like criticizing somebody for wearing the wrong wig," he said, also comparing it to Robert De Niro's face being de-aged with CGI for The Irishman.
"That doesn't affect his performance in it," he said. "I think we need to look at this with a clear vision. I think we need to be fair about that."