- Oscars frontrunner, The Brutalist, used AI to enhance Hungarian dialogue
- The film’s director, Brady Corbet, has now weighed in on the debate
- Netflix’s Emilia Pérez also uses AI voice enhancement
The nominations for the 97th Academy Awards are revealed later this week, and an AI Oscars controversy is plaguing the headlines. A report of The Brutalist using artificial intelligence is now not the only point of contention as news that Netflix’s Emilia Pérez (winner of four Golden Globes) also enhanced voices with AI.
Following on from yesterday’s story that Best Picture frontrunner, The Brutalist, uses AI to enhance Hungarian dialogue, the film’s director Brady Corbet has now weighed in on the debate, telling Deadline, “Adrien and Felicity’s performances are completely their own”.
“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.”
Corbet also emphasized that this post-editing was a manual process completed by the film’s sound team and Respeecher software. “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 clarified the allegations that AI was used in the film’s closing scenes. He said: “[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.”
Netflix is entangled in the debate too
The criticism directed at The Brutalist has also shone a light on Netflix’s own Oscars hopeful, Emilia Pérez, a musical directed by Jacques Audiard about a cartel boss looking to retire and transition into living as a woman. In the movie, Karla Sofìa Gascón’s singing voice was enhanced using AI.
An interview recorded in May at Cannes Film Festival shows re-recording mixer Cyril Holtz confirm that Respeecher was used to increase Gascón’s vocal range by merging it with the voice of French pop star, Camille.
The controversy around AI in movies is going to continue throughout awards season with many in the film industry opposed to any use of artificial intelligence. Whether or not this impacts the chances of The Brutalist or Emilia Pérez, two of the major frontrunners for the Oscars, from picking up a major prize is yet to be seen. I for one, don’t think we’ve heard the last of this AI Oscars controversy yet.
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