“The Brutalist” director addresses AI use on dialogue: 'Adrien and Felicity's performances are completely their own'

Director Brady Corbet is defending Adrien Brody and Felicity Jones, the stars of his film The Brutalist , after an editor for the film said that AI was used to enhance their performances.

"Adrien and Felicity's performances are completely their own," Corbet said in a statement to Entertainment Weekly. "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."

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The use of AI tools in film and television production has come under scrutiny in recent years. Entertainment industry unions included the topic as part of union negotiations in the 2023 strikes. Actors, writers, and other industry artists have criticized the expanded use of AI by movie studios and TV networks as a cost-cutting measure to replace workers and a technology that needs to be policed for abuse and contract violations.

"Judy Becker and her team did not use AI to create or render any of the buildings," the director continued, "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."

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"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," Corbet concluded in his statement.

The director's comments followed editor Dávid Jancsó telling Red Shark News, which covers video technology, that the Hungarian dialogue used in the film — not the English dialogue — had been aided by the use of AI.

"I am a native Hungarian speaker and I know that it is one of the most difficult languages to learn to pronounce," Jancsó told the news outlet. "Even with Adrien's Hungarian background — (Brody's mother is a Hungarian refugee who emigrated to the U.S. in 1956) — it's not that simple. It's an extremely unique language. We coached [Brody and Felicity Jones,] and they did a fabulous job but we also wanted to perfect it so that not even locals will spot any difference."

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Jancsó said he had played a part in their performances, too.

"Most of their Hungarian dialogue has a part of me talking in there. We were very careful about keeping their performances," he said. "It's mainly just replacing letters here and there. 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."

The Brutalist was released to theaters Dec. 20 — notably during the period in which awards bait is dropped — and whipped up excitement among critics. It maintains a healthy 93% score on review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes, based on more than 200 reviews.

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Earlier this month, the film was awarded the title of Best Motion Picture, Drama, at the Golden Globes. Corbet and Brody were awarded in their respective categories of best film director and best actor in a drama.

In our latest predictions for Oscar nominees, EW anticipates several nominations for the epic tale of architect  László Toth immigrating to America and building an empire. Both Brody and Corbet are expected to be named when the nominees are unveiled Jan. 23.

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