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Source: The Guardian
Cinema, like any art form, requires a great amount of time and human effort in order to achieve the creation of a given work within the medium. In fact, cinema is especially unique in that it tends to require the involvement of several individuals, with there often being hundreds, if not thousands, of people taking part in a single production. Whether one’s contribution to a film’s making has a creative or a technical purpose, there’s no denying that it takes the hard work of multiple perseverant figures in order for a film to reach its completion, with the credits that are played (usually) at the end of each and every major film production serving as proof of how many people were necessary for their respective creations. It’s for these reasons why artificial intelligence (AI) has become such a hot-button issue over the past couple years; rather than pay people to create part of a film, studios are becoming increasingly interested in having AI craft these elements digitally, whether they’re visuals or sounds, as a way to cut costs – or in other words, not pay for the labor that they’d otherwise require. For some studios, the ideal endgame would be to create a whole feature entirely through AI; none have made it to that point as of yet, but efforts are being made to slowly integrate its usage into an increasing number of films, much to the outrage of those who feel that they’re being unfairly replaced. Actors, writers, visual effects artists, and countless other members of creative professions have been rather vocal about their fears of AI taking over and replacing their jobs, and have been quick to criticize any film that has resorted to AI usage, even if it’s limited to only a few minor details. There are two films in particular that have recently received a decent amount of flack for the involvement of AI technology in their creation; given that they are both currently major awards contenders, these criticisms could not have come at a worse time.
The first of these two films is “The Brutalist”, Brady Corbet’s epic period drama about a Jewish Hungarian survivor of the Holocaust who has immigrated to the United States and puts his architectural skills to use on an ambitious project commissioned by a wealthy American tycoon. Up to this point, “The Brutalist” has received nothing less than overwhelming praise from those who have seen it; it was even fortunate enough to become one of the big winners at the Golden Globes with prizes being given to it for Best Motion Picture – Drama among others. However, in a recent interview conducted with Red Shark News, editor Dávid Jancsó revealed that AI software had manipulated the voices of lead actors Adrien Brody and Felicity Jones in order to make their characters’ dialogue sound more authentically Hungarian. According to Jancsó, the intention was to create dialogue that was so close to the actual Hungarian language “that not even locals will spot any difference”, and through the use of tools developed by the Ukraine-based Reseercher, which had previously done work for the Star Wars spin-off series “Obi-Wan Kenobi”, Jancsó has supposedly done just that. “Most of their Hungarian dialogue has a part of me talking in there. We were very careful about keeping their performances,” Jancsó explains. “It’s mainly just replacing letters here and there… we had so much dialogue in Hungarian that we really needed to speed up the process otherwise we’d still be in post.”
The second film to have recently received some pushback for its usage of AI technology is Jacques Audiard’s crime comedy musical “Emilia Perez”, which, coincidentally enough, not only happened to be the other big winner at the most recent Golden Globes (having taken home the award for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy), but also utilized AI in a manner almost identical to how “The Brutalist” used it. The interview revealing this information actually took place back in May during the film’s exhibition at the Cannes Film Festival, but has gotten a bit more interest as of lately in light of Corbet’s film being criticized for similar reasons. In said interview, re-recording mixer Cyril Holtz discusses how AI was utilized in order to change the voice of Karla Sofía Gascón, the film’s lead actress, so that it was better suited for the various bits of singing her character is meant to do throughout a good bulk of the feature. According to Holtz, AI was a necessary tool that allowed them to expand Gascón’s vocal range, something that they were able to achieve by blending her singing with that of Camille, the film’s primary composer and songwriter.
Those involved in the making of these films claim to have nothing but reasonable motives for using AI, but for many, such intentions fail to justify the refusal to have these task be done by actual creative professionals, as was considered normal throughout much of the medium’s history. It’s telling that another recent release, the A24 psychological thriller-horror “Heretic”, went out of its way to include a statement explicitly stating that “no generative AI was used in the making of this film”, as if to assure those concerned about the new technology that it had not been utilized in any way for its creation. It’s also worth noting that AI was one of the biggest talking points during last year’s writers and actors’ strikes, so much so that when a deal between these unions and the studios that employed them was eventually reached (thus bringing each of these strikes to an end), the contracts were written carefully to take AI into consideration and ensure that there were “guardrails” put in place so that AI could not be used to generate scripts or recreate actors’ performances without their full consent. On the other hand, not every creative in Hollywood has been overwhelmingly negative about the rise of AI; a Facebook post from “Taxi Driver” screenwriter Paul Schrader, for instance, discusses how he used ChatGPT to create ideas for films that seemed tailor-made for the likes of Quentin Tarantino and Ingmar Bergman, claiming to be “stunned” by what the AI had come up with. Still, Schrader was hesitant to fully endorse AI altogether, stating that “people mistakenly think AI is a technological advance like [the] automobile when in fact it’s a virus driven by a hyperbolic curve”.
In regards to how “The Brutalist” and “Emilia Perez” will be affected by the controversy that surrounds these revelations, it’s hard to determine how their chances of victory at the upcoming Academy Awards will be affected, especially given how polarizing AI and its usage has gotten over the past several months. Still, with Brody still being seen as a frontrunner for Best Actor and Gascón potentially making history as the first openly transgender woman to have a shot at the Best Actress prize, one shouldn’t be so quick to count either of these performers out.
