The Brutalist’s AI Controversy, Explained

ABLUpdated 1 week Ago2 Mins read2

That one accent coach on YouTube is about to be out of a job. Here’s everything to know about the use of AI in The Brutalist, including how director Brady Corbet has responded.

How did this start?

The Brutalist used AI tools to zhuzh the Hungarian of stars Adrien Brody and Felicity Jones, according to the film’s editor Dávid Jancsó. “If you’re coming from the Anglo-Saxon world certain sounds can be particularly hard to grasp,” he told tech mag Red Shark News. We first tried to ADR these harder elements with the actors. Then we tried to ADR them completely with other actors but that just didn’t work. So we looked for other options of how to enhance it.”

Was anything else done with AI in The Brutalist?

The film also used generative AI to make some of László Tóth’s drawings and completed buildings at the Venice Biennale.

Why AI?

Before AI, movies had a different tool for getting accents down pat: AH (acting harder). “I am a native Hungarian speaker and I know that it is one of the most difficult languages to learn to pronounce,” Janscó said. Even Brody, who has a Hungarian mother, apparently needed the robo-Hungarians to step in. “It’s an extremely unique language. We coached them and they did a fabulous job but we also wanted to perfect it so that not even locals will spot any difference.” Janscó compared the tweaks AI did to something that used to be done in ProTools by a human (probably unionized) sound engineer. “You can do this in ProTools yourself,” he said, “but we had so much dialogue in Hungarian that we really needed to speed up the process otherwise we’d still be in post.”

How is the film world reacting?

With Conclave memes, duh.

“The Brutalist usó IA” pic.twitter.com/VAwlASebn5

— David Vaka (Dir. David Vaca) (@DavidVaka_) January 19, 2025

How has the Corbet responded?

The director issued a statement to Deadline. “Adrien and Felicity’s performances are completely their own,” it reads. “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.”