Two of the biggest Oscar contenders this year, The Brutalist and Emilia Pérez, have been under scrutiny as people debate whether their use of AI should be awarded, or even accepted, on cinema’s most prestigious stage. Both films used the Ukrainian ‘Respeecher’ software to alter their lead actor’s voices. The Brutalist edited Adrien Brody, who goes into the Oscars race with a Best Actor Golden Globe under his belt, so that his Hungarian accent would be supposedly indistinguishable from local Hungarians by refining certain vowels and letters. Whereas Emilia Pérez used the same Ukrainian software to extend the vocal range of lead actress Karla Sofía Garsón, who makes history at the Oscars as the first trans woman to be nominated for Best Actress.
These utilisations of AI have been justified by some as simply being part of post production editing, with The Brutalist’s director Brady Corbet saying the AI was used to alter Brody’s accent with “creative intent” and to keep the accent as accurate as possible. However are these small uses of AI a sign of the future some predict AI will have in film?
The use of AI in film is currently only being used on a very small scale, but if there is no pushback against it then studios will continue to encourage large scale use of it
Whilst there was not a huge amount of AI used in both of these films, it suggests that the studios are beginning to see the possibilities of what AI can be used for in cinema. However, just because technology such as Respeecher can enable filmmakers to create art in what seems to be an ‘easier’ way, does this not go against what film and art is supposed to be about?
Film is at its core an art form for expression, and if we remove the human nature of creativity, learning and mistakes from art, then we lose the very meaning of art itself. Whilst I can understand the desire to have Brody’s accent sound as accurate as possible to all audiences, an actor is supposed to push themselves to become someone else, which brings a certain creative quality to a performance that a computer cannot successfully replicate. An occasional mispronunciation of the odd letter to me seems preferable than technology being used to give a speech with what can only ever be manufactured emotion.
The use of AI in film is currently only being used on a very small scale, but if there is no pushback against it then studios will continue to encourage large scale use of it, in a bid to hire less workers. Imagination and human creation in filmmaking is what has inspired people for decades now and so to normalise any usage of AI, big or small, would risk this imagination being lost to technology.