With the outroars regarding this year’s Oscars, from the tone deaf tone of Emilia Pérez’s soundtrack to actress Mikey Madison forgoing an intimacy coordinator in the intimate movie Anora, one in particular sticks out to me: the borderline brutal A.I. usage in the film The Brutalist.
The Brutalist on its own is an excellent movie. It follows the struggles of Hungarian-Jewish architect, László Tóth (Adrien Brody), after he escapes post-World War II Europe. Forced to leave behind his wife and niece, Tóth searches for a way to establish a new life in Pennsylvania, following his old passion of architecture.
The movie is a testament to creativity and the human spirit in the face of adversities. Brody portrays a man broken down by war and capitalism, who still finds the strength within him to build beautiful things.
One of the more notable aspects of the movie was the flawless Hungarian spoken by the actors. After fleeing his home, Brody’s character clings to his heritage through the use of his native language. Not only is Brody’s Hungarian accented-English in the movie perfect, his Hungarian is as well—especially for someone who is not a native speaker. The reason behind this perfection was not due to Brody’s study of the language, but that the actor’s voice had been modified through an generative A.I. software run by the company Respeecher, revealed by the film’s editor Dávid Jancsó.
The technology works by feeding audio clips of native Hungarian speakers into an A.I., which is then trained on their accents. The A.I. takes what it learns from those clips and applies it to new audio and applies the speech patterns of the original clips to make the audio sound more authentic.
Although post-production vocal adjustments are nothing new in the film industry, this type of modification differs from standard practices.Traditionally, editors pitch and adjust actors’ voices directly using computer software. This A.I. software instead takes the actor’s dialogue and voice and combines it with the audio that is fed into it, creating a version of Brody’s voice that is artificially unique from the actor’s original dialogue.
In a later statement, director Brady Corbet clarified that the modification was only used for the portions of the film in Hungarian, in order to perfect the “vowels and letters for accuracy.”
But there are many people who still are hesitant to fully accept the intermingling of A.I. and art. People like me, for example.
Until regulated, I don’t think A.I. has a place in art.
This is especially significant since The Brutalist was nominated for and won several Oscars. Not only did it win Best Actor for Adrien Brody’s performance and was nominated for Best Picture, but it was also nominated for Best Achievement in Film Editing by Jancsó as well. The nomination for an Oscar for the editing done in the film, editing that is partially attributed to the usage of A.I., signifies a justification and acceptance of A.I. in human artistry. It takes away from the craft and the artistry that goes into acting in a movie–one that ironically is an ode to human creation. Part of being an actor is doing accents and speaking in other languages. Part of the skill of being an actor is getting them right. By dehumanizing Brody’s voice in the movie, his talents as a serious actor are delegitimized.
There have been many movies in the past that have featured notoriously bad accents. Dick Van Dyke danced his way through Mary Poppins with a hilariously terrible Cockney accent. Keanu Reeves did an even worse job with his version of a British accent in Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
Admittedly, these accents can take away from the film by being distracting or ruining the authenticity of the character. But part of being human is being imperfect—especially when it comes to an art like acting. Acting is a talent and a skill, and it requires dedication and practice. Putting on a performance isn’t about being perfect—it’s about authentically exploring the human condition.
Yet when A.I. is thrown into the mix, there is less authenticity. Jancsó said the goal was to make the actor’s accents so perfect that not even “locals will spot any difference.” Because of its perfection, however, the performance ultimately loses part of its humanity.
In addition, this new form of post-production editing is not the same as the traditional minor tweaks done to actors’ dialogue. The A.I. did not modify Brody’s voice, but created a completely new one. Although based on human speech, Brody’s Hungarian is ultimately not a human speaking.
Recently at Georgetown, we have had our own conversations on A.I. in art. An A.I. generated art competition is set to be exhibited on April 15th in Lauinger Library, organized by—along with others—assistant professor Elissa Redmiles.
Professor Redmiles is an assistant professor in Georgetown’s department of Computer Science and focuses on, among other things, measuring the ethics of A.I.-based technologies.
In a recent project, Redmiles and other researchers intend to discover the potential generative A.I. has to significantly impact both digital art education and the financial benefits of artistic creation, through an A.I. art contest.
“Existing literature on people’s ownership over the output of generative [A.I.] models has been primarily normative, with little focus on capturing the opinion of the future users of these systems, and consumers of their output,” Redmiles wrote over email in a comment to the Voice. “Yet, lay people’s opinions (should) influence proposed legislation, which in turn aims to incentivize behaviors like creativity.”
In her study, Redmiles seeks to determine if A.I. generated art is a threat to art and artists, as well as the legal issues surrounding ownership of A.I. art.
“The persuasive nature of art often transcends language and we are at a critical junction in the history of generative [A.I.] art,” Redmiles wrote. “The perception and creation of generative [A.I.] images/art matters.”
For the most part, my qualms with A.I. are not about the specific usage in this film, but that we as a society have yet to set standards for A.I. usage. Going forward, it is pertinent to create guidelines for A.I., especially when it comes to art.
The A.I. used in The Brutalist is not the most unethical example. With regulations, I understand why it could be used in similar situations in the future (such as when the actors are speaking in a language like Hungarian that is notoriously difficult to pronounce).
I’m more worried that the slope we are on is slippier than many realize. First, we let it slide that the accents in a movie were adjusted by A.I. and garnered Oscars and nominations for it. What’s next? The voices are entirely generated by A.I. and accent work is no longer required to be an actor?
A.I. is an industry that is developing right under our noses, and we have the ability to change how we perceive and treat it. A.I. normalization is already happening in digital art, where you are equally likely to see A.I. generated imagery as you are to see real, human-made digital or physical art on a TikTok For You page or Instagram’s Recommended Reel.
We as a society need to set a new standard for what makes art art. In my somewhat extreme opinion, that means a masterpiece like The Brutalist should be blacklisted from awards until new, official A.I. standards are imposed for movies. In addition to this, it is important that more specific laws are created to regulate A.I. generated art.
Let’s not ruin art by making it perfect.
