‘The Brutalist’ Director Responds to AI Backlash

Brady Corbet has responded to online chatter regarding the use of AI technology on his award contender The Brutalist, which is coming under fire after the film’s editor Dávid Jancsó commented in an interview on the use of AI to enhance the performance of the film’s leads, Adrien Brody and Felicity Jones.

In an interview with video tech publication Red Shark News, editor Dávid Jancsó said the filmmakers used AI tools from Ukrainian specialist Respeecher to tweak Brody’s and Jones’ Hungarian dialogue in the film to make it sound more authentic. That AI was used in the film in any form has sparked online outrage, with many suggesting it should disqualify it for awards consideration.

“Adrien and Felicity’s performances are completely their own,” said Brady Corbet, in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter on Monday, countering the suggestion that technology was used to improve or change the actors’ performances. “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.”

Much of the film’s dialogue is in Hungarian. In his interview with Red Shark, Jancsó, who praised Brody’s and Jones’ performance, said small tweaks were needed to enhance specific Hungarian vocal sounds to make it as accurate to native speakers.

“I am a native Hungarian speaker and I know that it is one of the most difficult languages to learn to pronounce,” Jancsó said. “If you’re coming from the Anglo-Saxon world certain sounds can be particularly hard to grasp.”

Under tight budget constraints — the entire budget for The Brutalist was less than $10 million — the filmmakers used technology from Ukrainian AI startup Respeecher to finesse the delivery. Jancsó said Brady and Jones recorded their own voices for the AI and that he fed his own native Hungarian delivery into the system as a model.

“We were very careful about keeping their performances. It’s mainly just replacing letters here and there,” said Jancsó, who described the process as closer to dialogue editing than anything creative. “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 said Generative AI was also used for a sequence at the end of the film, as part of the inspiration for a series of architectural drawings and finished buildings supposedly designed by Brody’s character, the fictional architect László Tóth. The designs themselves were hand-drawn.

“It is controversial in the industry to talk about AI, but it shouldn’t be,” Jancsó tells Red Shark. “We should be having a very open discussion about what tools AI can provide us with. 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.”

Commenting on the architectural designs seen in the film’s final scenes, Corbet clarified that “[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.”

Critics have applauded both Brody and Jones for their performances in the film, in which they play Hungarian refugees who emigrate to the U.S. after World War II. Brody’s starring turn won the Golden Globe for best actor in a drama and he is considered a front-runner for this year’s Oscars.

Commenting on his period epic, Corbet said, “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.”

That AI was used at all in The Brutalist has sparked a heated debate online.

“My take on The Brutalist AI thing is it’s a slippery slope to award Adrien Brody knowing his accent was edited with AI,” noted one user on X. “IMO altering a performance with AI like that should automatically disqualify someone from these awards shows.”

“I saw The Brutalist on 35mm film and was utterly taken aback by how beautiful the movie was,” noted another. “Learning that ai was used not just to enhance Adrien Drody’s accent but to design buildings in the movie is absolutely pathetic.”

Others argued that it would be unfair to reduce the actors’ performances to a few vowel pronunciations.

“On one hand, it slightly diminishes the detailing, but I can’t say the accent was a deciding factor in [Brody’s] performance’s resonance,” noted one user on X. “I wasn’t moved by the accent; I was moved by how he conveyed emotion.”

Ukrainian company Respeecher has been at the cutting edge of audio AI for several years now. The company made headlines —and sparked controversy in some quarters —after they did a deal with Lucasfilm to use the iconic voice of the late James Earl Jones for future Darth Vader projects. Jones had authorized the use of his voice recordings in this manner. The company also worked with Lucasfilm to create a younger version of Mark Hamill’s voice for a Luke Skywalker cameo in the final episode of the second season of The Mandalorian.

This story originally published on Jan. 20, 6:38 a.m., and has since been updated with director Brady Corbet’s response to editor Dávid Jancsó’s comments on the film’s use of AI.