After a few L.A. fire-related delays, the 2025 Oscar nominations have finally been announced, and—surprise, surprise—The Brutalist has emerged as a front-runner with 10 nominations, including Best Actor and Best Supporting Actress. But just because it’s nominated doesn’t mean the film will leave with any golden statues come Oscar night. In fact, the film’s Oscar chances are currently up in the air, thanks to a recent controversy surrounding The Brutalist’s use of Artificial Intelligence.

Don’t get the big deal? Here’s what you need to know before you start placing bets in your Oscar pool.

What AI was used in The Brutalist?

In a recent interview with Red Shark News, The Brutalist editor Dávid Jancsó—who just earned an Oscar nomination for his work—admitted that the film used AI in post production to fix stars Adrien Brody and Felicity Jones’ Hungarian pronunciation. “I am a native Hungarian speaker and I know that it is one of the most difficult languages to learn to pronounce,” Jancsó said. “We coached [Adrien and Felicity] and they did a fabulous job but we also wanted to perfect it so that not even locals will spot any difference.”

Jancsó added that they first tried to use Automated Dialogue Replacement, or ADR,, but that apparently “just didn’t work.” So, to “perfect” the actors’ Hungarian, the team used an AI tool from Respeecher, a Ukrainian tech company. To use the AI, Adrien and Felicity recorded their voices and fed it into the AI (as did Jancsó) so that they could manipulate their voices and create the desired pronunciation.

“Most of their Hungarian dialogue has a part of me talking in there,” the editor noted. “We were very careful about keeping their performances. It’s mainly just replacing letters here and there.” He added that he could have done this manually using ProTools, but because of the massive amounts of dialogue that needed fixing, it was faster to use AI.

But that’s not all. The filmmakers also used GenAI to create a sequence at the end of the film, bringing the main character’s architectural designs to life. “It is controversial in the industry to talk about AI, but it shouldn’t be,” said Jancsó, adding that new tools can cut production time. “We use AI to create these tiny little details that we didn’t have the money or the time to shoot.”

Shanna Besson/PAGE 114 – WHY NOT PRODUCTIONS – PATHÉ FILMS – FRANCE 2 CINÉMA

Emilia Pérez, another Oscar front-runner, also used AI.

The Brutalist wasn’t the only Oscar hopeful to use AI in production. Emilia Pérez—this year’s most nominated film with 13 nods—also reportedly used Respeecher to blend star Karla Sofía Gascón’s singing voice with that of another singer so that her character could hit certain notes that weren’t in her register. Karla was nominated as Best Actress for her performance.

Could the AI controversy cost Adrien Brody and The Brutalist the Oscars?

The most hotly-debated aspect of the use of AI in The Brutalist (and, to a lesser extent, Emilia Pérez) is how it affected the actors’ performances—or, more accurately, how they are perceived. After the film’s triumphant showing at the 2025 Golden Globes, Adrien Brody became a front-runner to win his second Best Actor Oscar. But if a percentage of his performance is enhanced by AI, how much of the finished product is Adrien’s skill and how much is technology?

In a statement responding to the controversy, director Brady Corbet defended the film’s performers. “Adrien and Felicity’s performances are completely their own,” he told The Hollywood Reporter. He insisted that the two worked with dialect coach Tanera Marshall and that “Respeecher technology was used in Hungarian language dialogue editing only, specifically to refine certain vowels and letters for accuracy. No English language was changed.” He also specified that this “was a manual process, done by our sound team and Respeecher in post-production.”

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Admittedly, I’m not well-versed on Respeecher technology or how this product works, but I’m unclear as to how, exactly, this was a “manual process,” as Brady insisted. (Perhaps this means that sound engineers were employed to identify areas of concern and replace them with the AI developed sounds, which would suggest that the AI was not used to avoid hiring additional artists or post-production crew? I’m just spitballing here.)

He also clarified that GenAI was not used to “create or render” any of the buildings in the final sequence, but “in the memorial video featured in the background of a shot,” where the “editorial team created pictures intentionally designed to look like poor digital renderings circa 1980.” Before AI, this would have likely been a job done by animators or—if the budget was too tight—simply not done at all. Two very reasonable, very doable options.

These sound like perfectly reasonable explanations, but the use of AI could be enough of a threat to Academy voters that they think twice about voting for the film. Regardless of whether or not the AI used in The Brutalist or Emilia Pérez fundamentally altered the Oscar-nominated performances in film, the use of any AI tool in film sets a dangerous precedent, and it’s definitely possible that this existential threat could affect Adrien and The Brutalist’s Oscar chances.

Why does it matter?

The threat of AI has loomed large over Hollywood for years now. In fact, it was a major impetus for both the Screen Actors Guild and the Writers Guild strikes in 2023. The fact is, there is little to no regulation on how data inputted into an AI tool can be used. For instance, if Adrien and Felicity submitted vocal recordings to the Respeecher app, could another film or studio use that recording to manufacture a voice performance from either actor?

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Just last year, Scarlett Johansson threatened to sue OpenAI after the company released demos of “Sky,” an AI voice system that sounded eerily similar to hers. OpenAI ended up ditching “Sky,” but it’s doubtful that below-the-line workers would have access to the same legal resources.

How long until AI tools—trained by professional filmmakers and based on the works of entire casts and crews—are used to replace the jobs of those same filmmakers and artists? It’s true that all art is referential, but AI-created “art” is arguably just a sophisticated form of theft, which makes it an even bigger threat to the industry. (Not to mention the fact that AI tools are bad for the environment, which many in Hollywood claim to care about.)

But AI doesn’t just pose a threat to filmmakers, it’s also a threat to how we, as the audience, receive films. Ask yourself this one question: If it were so crucial to the artistic integrity and storytelling of The Brutalist for the main characters to speak perfect Hungarian, why not hire native Hungarian speakers? Spoiler alert: It’s obviously not, so they didn’t.

The filmmakers appear to have (at least, originally) made a calculated decision to prioritize performers over language accuracy—which, for the record, is completely fine! Let’s be honest, the (majority) non-Hungarian speaking audience would not have been able to tell the difference. And even if they had, audiences would just have to do what they’ve always done: suspend disbelief. That’s the artistic cost of AI in film.

Suspending disbelief is part of the magic of movies. We don’t love Back to the Future because the time travel plot is realistic; we love it because it’s so well-made, so well-acted, and so fun that we forget to care. A film should be able to take you on an adventure without having to be “realistic” or perfect. There’s joy in the imperfections. And I, for one, am not ready to give that up just yet.

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