The Brutalist’s Use of AI Has Opened A New Conversation

With the recent news that the film The Brutalist utilized AI in their movie, people are questioning the film's intergrity with the arrival of awards season. Photo by Fenix.707 via Flickr

The rise of AI technology over the last decade has been meteoric. There has been rapid growth and improvement to AI-related resources, offering support in writing, math, science and even medical fields. However, AI is starting to creep into art. Movies, music and general content creation formats have now incorporated AI, albeit in minor ways. 

For mediums considered to be a wholly original and human creative space, it makes sense why several people are up in arms regarding the use of AI in Brady Corbet’s historical epic, “The Brutalist.” The film, starring Adrien Brody, is currently nominated for 10 Academy Awards and is the possible Oscar frontrunner in multiple categories, including Best Picture.

The film’s editor, Dávid Jancsó, revealed in an interview with RedShark News that the production of the film used Respeecher software that specializes in generative AI technology for voices to enhance the Hungarian accents of Adrien Brody and Felicity Jones in the film. 

Jancsó, himself Hungarian, admitted that he fed his voice through the software to make Brody and Jones’ accents as precise as possible.

“The Brutalist” was financed independently and cost around 10 million dollars to make. The crew used minimal bits of AI to expedite the post-production process.

Along with voice-enhancing AI, Jancsó mentioned AI was used to help render Adrien Brody’s character László Tóth’s mock-up blueprints and his finished buildings towards the end of the film.

Throughout the interview, Jancsó defended the use of AI in the film, saying “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.”

With AI becoming so prevalent, it will inevitably gain prominence as a tool in various art forms, including filmmaking. 

Corbet, the film’s director, released a statement that tackled the usage of AI. “Adrien and Felicity’s performances are completely their own,” he said. “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…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 vehemently opposed the use of AI regarding the renderings of buildings. “[‘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.”

Although many do not agree with the use of AI in film, the main argument for why “The Brutalist’s” AI use is not as significant as it is made out to be is that it does not change major factors in the film.

“The Brutalist” did use AI to enhance small parts of dialogue and potentially the rendering of buildings, but it is also a Godfather-style epic made independently for a relatively low budget of 10 million dollars. Other movies from this past year that used AI in various ways are “Furiosa,” “Alien: Romulus” and “Civil War,” which cost 168 million, 80 million and 50 million, respectively. 

Is the barometer for ethical AI use how much the movie costs to make? Not necessarily. However, independent, original cheaply-made cinema has always been at a disadvantage in the film industry. Independent filmmakers typically have to do more with less. If the scope and epic nature of “The Brutalist” was made with minimal AI, that is an achievement in and of itself.

Rather than create a vicious discourse surrounding the film, this controversy has opened a conversation regarding AI in the film industry.

On the one hand, many believe that filmmakers and artists should never let anything compromise their artistic integrity — in this case, the use of AI. On the other hand, the argument is that if the use of AI is so minimal that it has little effect on something barely noticeable, then it is more of a tool than a crutch.

With AI in art, for there to be a resolution, there needs to be an urgency to draw hard ethical lines. This isn’t about performances or creative choices being unworthy, be it of praise or awards, but rather about artistic principles. General audiences have problems with generative AI that creates new content rather than performing mundane tasks.
Our society loves to make and discuss art. To do that in a world where AI has become ubiquitous, we need to start understanding AI’s pros and cons. Only then will we be able to accurately judge the beginning and end of the AI debate.