The profound impacts that Artificial Intelligence (AI) has had on us as a society in recent years cannot be understated. AI has sunk its teeth practically everywhere you look, impacting our cultural landscape in ways previously hard to imagine. As more industries and corporations have begun to use and rely on AI, there has been significant pushback, as many fear for their jobs.

One industry that has been greatly impacted is film. Look no further than The Brutalist, the latest vision from director Brady Corbet, which just won three Academy Awards for Best Actor (Adrien Brody), Best Cinematography, and Best Original Score. Yet, even before nominations for the 97th Academy Awards were released, people online called for the film to be disqualified for its use of AI. 

While the general public seems to disagree with movies using AI, when you look at the facts, there is an equal amount of good to be found within the bad. 

In an article published Jan. 11 by technology outlet RedShark News titled “Why Oscar contender The Brutalist was shot on VistaVision,” an interview with the film’s editor Dávid Jancsó revealed that Ukrainian AI program Respeecher (which was notably also used in best picture nominee Emilia Pérez) was used to modify lead performers Adrien Brody and Felicity Jones’ vowel sounds when speaking Hungarian.

“I am a native Hungarian speaker and I know that it is one of the most difficult languages to learn to pronounce,” Jancsó explained. “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.”

Jancsó also claimed that the film used generative AI to create some of the architectural drawings used in the film’s final moment, but Corbet quickly denied these statements. 

When watching the film, the use of AI seems insignificant. With a runtime of over three and a half hours (not including the film’s built-in 15-minute intermission), the few scenes where Hungarian is spoken and modified with AI don’t take away from the lead’s terrific performances, making Brody’s nomination and win feel deserved. However, it does serve as an interesting talking point that does pose many questions: Why did the film need to use AI? Should they have used it? Should movies that use AI be disqualified from awards?

To answer the first, Jancsó explained it was to reduce the film’s production cost, as they had a very low budget of just $10 million. 

Senior Karthik Vedula, who has experience working with AI, acknowledged why it can be beneficial under constraints like these.

“It’s not that it’s better than humans,” Vedula stated. “You can have AI models that do things faster. You can have AI models that do things humans can’t do.”

This perfectly qualifies one of Hollywood’s biggest concerns, the jobs of industry workers being replaced. With many in the business already struggling to afford basic housing and necessary care, the fear of robots stealing their paychecks certainly hasn’t gone over well with them. These issues were the basis of two industry strikes we saw in 2023, those of SAG-AFTRA (the Screen Actors Guild) and the WGA (the Writer’s Guild of America), wherein they sought protection against AI. While both guilds reached compromises at the time and things seemed to be looking up, AI certainly hasn’t slowed down.

According to freshman Jennifer Zhang, however, who considers herself an artist and has deep love for the art community, it’s not all bad.

“There are benefits to using AI in movies, but the important thing is that AI usage should be monitored,” Zhang said. “ It could improve the quality of work, but it should not be brainstorming ideas and helping with the creative process.”

The latter of the proposed. questions may be harder to answer. Whether or not The Brutalist, or movies in general, should be using AI is subjective. The arguments on both sides are strong: job security vs. creative freedom, imperfections vs. improved quality, etc. I say, go for it, but there must be guidelines and limitations. 

First, any artificial intelligence used to modify the work of performers, whether it be altering their voices, using de-aging technology, copying and using their likeness in other properties, etc. must be used to the actors’ knowledge and consent. SAG-AFTRA expressed their fears during their most recent strike that their faces and voices were being taken and used without their permission, a very real concern many shared. Abuses like this should absolutely not be tolerated, but that doesn’t mean filmmakers should be barred from using AI to alter performances when they see fit. It all needs to happen with permission of the performers. As long as actors are not being taken advantage of, filmmakers should be able to carry out their vision however they want. I mean, that’s the point of art right? To express one’s ideas however they would like?

It should also be clearly stated to moviegoers when AI is being used in a film. 

“It is controversial in the industry to talk about AI, but it shouldn’t be,” Jancsó stated in that RedShark News interview.

From the piece, this was the one statement that stuck out to me. Filmmakers and artists are so scared to admit they used AI because of how people will react, which leads to even worse reactions later when it is detected or revealed by someone other than themselves. If filmmakers simply stated when and how AI was used, a lot of the stigma around the concept would be reduced and perhaps people would be more accepting. This could be stated by the director in interviews, on movie posters, in the credits, really any number of ways as long as it’s completely honest. It’s the fact that AI comes off as a secret that is making people skeptical.

This is one of the traps The Brutalist fell victim to. It almost felt like a betrayal when word got out, like everyone who had already seen it, including the Oscar voters, had been deceived. If Corbet had simply stated the use of AI beforehand, I doubt most people would have batted an eye, and the people who still didn’t want to see it didn’t have to, but at least everyone knew what they were in for.

For the final question, should the use of AI disqualify movies from awards? Probably not. As I previously mentioned, The Brutalist succeeds at basically everything it sets out to do. It is a towering achievement held up by Brody and Jones, and their awards recognition shouldn’t be nonexistent when they gave two of the best performances of the year. With how AI is growing, we can expect to see many occasions like this in the future, and it might become the new normal. If we disqualified all those films from the Oscars, it might only be the lower tier films competing for Best Picture. A category already easy to laugh at that would lose all of its value very quickly. Leave it to the voters to decide how much is too much when it comes to artificial intelligence.

All in all, everyone gets to decide on their own what they want and don’t want to support, and filmmakers can choose the tools they want and don’t want to use. A recommendation though: as our world continues to grow and AI advances with it, open yourself up to mediums experimenting with new technologies to see how they can further push the boundaries of their craft. Don’t let yourself miss out on great films because of worries about our ever-changing landscape.