Canadian director Cronenberg believes that hate speech against Brutalist for using AI is a deliberate campaign by other Oscar nominees
Canadian director David Cronenberg intervened in the discussion about the use of artificial intelligence in the film Brutalist. The film, directed by Brady Corbett, attracted attention for its dramatic plot and powerful performance by Adrien Brody. However, the film has also been in the spotlight for another reason - some people are unhappy with the way AI technology was used to correct Brody's Hungarian accent.
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According to The Hollywood Reporter, Cronenberg did not hold back his emotions while speaking at the recent London Soundtrack Festival with his long-time colleague, composer Howard Shore. He suggested that the backlash was not just a matter of ethics or art, but perhaps a deliberate move.
"I think it was a campaign against Brutalist by some of the other Oscar nominees," he said. "It's very similar to Harvey Weinstein's style, even though he's gone." In his opinion, this could be a sneak attack by competitors who wanted to undermine the film's chances of winning the Oscar.
The Brutalist tells the story of Laszlo Tóth, a Hungarian-Jewish architect played by Brody, who flees to America after World War II to rebuild his life and career. Brody won the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Drama and the second Oscar of his career for this role.
The controversy began when editor David Yancho let slip that artificial intelligence technology from the Ukrainian company Respeecher was used to polish Brody's Hungarian dialogue. Hungarian is a difficult language to master, and although Brody and his co-star Felicity Jones worked hard with a dialect coach, the team wanted everything to be perfect - so accurate that even native speakers wouldn't know the difference. They loaded the actors' voices into the software to fine-tune certain sounds. It wasn't a complete change, just a small correction.
Cronenberg isn't bothered by the uproar. He noted that voice manipulation in films is nothing new. Back in his 1993 film Butterfly, he changed the pitch of actor John Lone's voice to match the character's gender reveal. For him, it's just part of the filmmaker's toolkit - there's no reason to panic.
Source: THR
