Oscar-Nominated Film Editor’s AI Use Might Cost It An Academy Award
The period film The Brutalist has emerged as a strong Oscar contender for the Best Picture Award. The movie already won Best Actor in a Motion Picture–Drama, Best Director, and Best Motion Picture–Drama at the Golden Globes in early January. Many people in Hollywood expected the film to make an equally strong showing at the Academy Awards in March.
However, an admission from the film’s editor about AI use has now caused many to wonder if the film deserves an Oscar. In an interview with RedShark News, film editor Dávid Jancsó said that the team used an AI tool to correct the pronunciation of the Hungarian dialogue and to generate key graphics for a scene at the end.
Why The Brutalist was a Strong Award Contender Before the AI Controversy
The Brutalist follows the story of László Tóth (played by Adrien Brody), a Hungarian-born Jewish architect who survives the Holocaust and immigrates to the United States. The film also stars Felicity Jones as his wife Erzsébet and Guy Pearce as Harrison Lee Van Buren, his most important client.
Directed by Brady Corbet, the film garnered early praise as soon as it premiered at the Venice Film Festival, where it won the Silver Lion Award. It continued to rack up nominations and wins on the awards circuit, including nine BAFTA nominations. So far it has amassed 177 nominations and 58 wins, which is why many expected it to be a top pick at the Academy Awards—until Jancsó revealed that AI was used in post production.
How Oscar Nominee The Brutalist Used AI Tools
A key scene in The Brutalist features Tóth reading aloud a letter written in Hungarian while his wife Erzsébet listens. While Brody and Jones did receive dialect coaching, Hungarian is a very difficult language to pronounce for non-native speakers. Jancsó told RedShark that the team first tried to use ADR (automatic dialogue replacement) to fix the pronunciation, but it didn’t work. So they turned to an AI tool called Respeecher to record the actors talking and then add key syllables in Hungarian.
Jancsó also said that the editing team used generative AI to create graphics for the movie’s epilogue, which features a scene at the Venice Biennale. The architectural drawings and finished buildings in this scene were made using generative AI. This AI controversy has angered many viewers, especially since the movie centers on the value of artistic creation, specifically architecture.
“It is controversial in the industry to talk about AI, but it shouldn’t be,” Jancsó told RedShark. “There’s nothing in the film using AI that hasn’t been done before. It just makes the process a lot faster.”
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