The list of nominees for the 97th Academy Awards will be released on the morning of January 23rd local time. This year's voting process was generally uneventful. Except for the postponement due to the Los Angeles wildfire, it was generally possible to guess which films and people might be nominated. However, near the end of the voting, controversy suddenly broke out over the use of artificial intelligence in the film "The Brutalist." This also added some uncertainty to the prospects of this popular work's "Oscar" competition.
The first person to reveal that Brutalist used AI in the production process was not the powerful Hollywood media or any competitor, but the film's editor himself, Hungarian David Jancso. He is the youngest son of Hungarian national treasure director Miklós Jancso, born in 1982. After becoming a film director, he did not follow in his father's footsteps and became a director, but instead worked as an editor.
On January 11, the professional film technology website Red Shark News (www.redsharknews.com) published an interview with Jansø, in which he talked about the various difficulties encountered in editing Brutalism, including the Hungarian dialogues spoken by the leading actors Adrien Brody and Felicity Jones in the film. In the film, Brody plays László Toth, a Jewish Hungarian architect who immigrated to the United States after World War II, and Jones plays his wife Elzebet.
Adrien Brody plays a Hungarian architect who leaves his homeland.
According to Janso, in order to make their Hungarian sound more realistic and fluent, he used the artificial intelligence tools developed by the Ukrainian software company Respeecher during post-production. "My native language is Hungarian, so I know that Hungarian is one of the most difficult languages in the world to learn how to pronounce. It is a very unique language. Although Brody and Jones have imitated it very well, we still hope to achieve the most perfect level, so that even Hungarians can't find any flaws when listening." He said in an interview.
According to him, there are many words in the Hungarian dialogue that are particularly difficult to pronounce. They have tried re-recording in post-production, but the results were not good. They also thought about finding Hungarians to dub the two actors, but that was not ideal either. In desperation, they thought of using AI. Specifically, Brody and Jones entered their pronunciations into the artificial intelligence software, and then input his own Hungarian pronunciation, and then used the software to generate some tricky voices. "So there are elements of my voice in many parts of their Hungarian dialogue. But I also paid great attention to preserving their own language, mainly replacing the difficult-to-pronounce parts with sounds made by artificial intelligence."
It wasn't long before the mainstream media in Hollywood took notice of the interview, and the so-called "Brutalist" was filmed using artificial intelligence" spread like wildfire and quickly became hot news on social media and the Internet. Many people questioned that since the dialogue between the two actors was enhanced by AI, was it fair for him to compete for the Oscar with other actors who performed completely in person? After all, speaking lines, especially imitating foreign language or dialect accents, is a test of an actor's basic skills, and is also considered to be a project that can get extra points when evaluating acting skills. Moreover, artificial intelligence has long become a sensitive topic in Hollywood in recent years. In the Hollywood strike in 2023, screenwriters and actors emphasized that film companies must restrain the use of artificial intelligence to ensure that their jobs are not affected. From this point of view, it is not surprising that "Brutalist" has become the target of public criticism.
Soon, the director of "Brutalism" Brady Corbett personally stepped in to put out the fire. He told the media that the performances of the two actors had nothing to do with artificial intelligence, and the so-called Respeecher technology was only used in the editing of a small amount of Hungarian dialogue, mainly to improve the accuracy of the pronunciation of certain words; as for the English dialogue, no changes were made at all. However, since the director's words were actually no different from those of the editor, the controversy surrounding the film still exists.
According to media reports, this year's another hit, Emilia Pérez, also used the Ukrainian Respeecher AI software, mainly to enhance the singing of the lead actress, Carla Sofia Gascón. With the help of AI, the singing of French singer Camille, who composed the film's soundtrack, was integrated with the AI. The first person to reveal this was also the sound mixer Cyril Holtz from the creative team.
"Emilia Perez" also uses AI technology to modify the singing of Carla Sofia Gascon.
In this case, since the outside world is questioning whether the two leading actors of "Brutalist" relied on the help of AI, should "Emilia Perez" be treated the same way?
In fact, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the sponsor of the Oscars, not only pursues excellence in art, but also encourages the continuous advancement of film technology. Using the latest technology to improve actors' performances is not unprecedented in the case of "Brutalists" and "Emilia Perez".
For example, in the 2010 film Black Swan starring Natalie Portman, a lot of dancing shots of professional ballet dancer Sarah Lane were used, and then the producers used digital technology to superimpose Portman's face onto Lane's. Sarah Lane later revealed in an interview with the media that after the incident was exposed, the producer asked her, "Can you not accept any more interviews before the Oscars ceremony, because this is very bad for Natalie's image" and will affect her chances of winning.
A large number of dancing scenes in "Black Swan" used the "face-changing" technology.
There is also the piano playing clip of Michael Douglas in the 2013 film "Behind the Candelabra", which was actually helped by digital technology. The post-production special effects team used a similar method to "Black Swan" and put his face on the body of a professional pianist.
In "Behind the Candelabra", the scene of Michael Douglas playing the piano was also created by digital special effects.
Ten years later, with the development of artificial intelligence technology, the post-production special effects work for actors is now more seamless and difficult to detect than the above-mentioned "face-pasting" method. For example, the Respeecher tool mentioned above can actually be used to simulate the voice of the same person when he was young, so in the "Star Wars" spin-off series "The Mandalorian" and "The Book of Boba Fett", the Respeecher tool was used to help Mark Hamill, who plays Luke Skywalker, "rejuvenate" his voice.
There is also a Hollywood artificial intelligence company called "Flawles", which has developed software called True Sync and Deep Editor, which can be used to modify the actors' lip movements and facial expressions when modifying the lines in the later stage. It is said that this technology has been used in Sony Pictures' "Kraven the Hunter" and "Venom 3" and other films.
Therefore, when "Brutalist" caused controversy, Paul Schrader, a filmmaker who has always been outspoken and daring, posted on his personal social media that artificial intelligence is not a scourge, and he has been using ChatGPT to write scripts. "ChatGPT can list a lot of excellent ideas in a few seconds, and they are all original. In this case, why do we screenwriters have to spend months thinking hard about new stories?"
