Did Films ‘The Brutalist’ and ‘Emilia Pérez’ Cross the Line with AI Voice Editing?

Golden Globe-winning films The Brutalist and Emilia Pérez have come under fire for using AI to modify actors' voices in their critically acclaimed films.

“The Brutalist,” starring Adrien Brody, Felicity Jones, and Guy Pearce, depicts a visionary architect who, after escaping postwar Europe, revitalizes his life and career in America with the help of a wealthy industrialist.

“Emilia Pérez,” meanwhile, follows Manitas del Monte, a Mexican cartel boss who becomes Emilia Pérez, played by Karla Sofia Gascon.

Alongside her lawyer Rita, played by Zoe Saldaña, and wife Jessi, played by Selena Gomez, the film intertwines their dramatic transformations with musical interludes.

AI controversy

The current controversy comes on the heels of a months-long strike in 2023, where Hollywood's use of artificial intelligence in lieu of paid human actors was a hot-button issue.

But in an interview with Red Shark News, Hungary-born The Brutalist editor Dávid Jancsó revealed how the AI-powered tool Respeecher—like Autotune for dialogue—enhanced the Hungarian pronunciation of the film's two lead actors.

“I am a native Hungarian speaker and I know that it is one of the most difficult languages to learn to pronounce,” Jancsó said. “It’s an extremely unique language. We coached [Brody and Jones] and they did a fabulous job but we also wanted to perfect it so that not even locals will spot any difference.”

According to Jancsó, stars Adrien Brody and Felicity Jones were onboard with the use of AI to enhance their voices using his own.

“Most of their Hungarian dialogue has a part of me talking in there,” he said. “We were very careful about keeping their performances. It's mainly just replacing letters here and there. You can do this in ProTools yourself, but we had so much dialogue in Hungarian that we really needed to speed up the process.”

One of the concerns that SAG-AFTRA members had during the 2023 strikes was that AI would be used to replace them and that their likenesses would be used without compensation.

“The most important point is that we're talking about emerging technology that is going to affect the entire world,” SAG-AFTRA spokesperson Zeke Alton previously told Decrypt during a media Q&A.

“We just happen to be the canary in the coal mine. We're setting a precedent for how the workforce in general, both the United States and around the world, is going to be treated,” they said.

While the use of AI in film productions remains controversial, AI developers cheered the use of the technology.

“The Brutalist” production used GenAI from Ukrainian Respeecher to subtly improve American actors' pronunciation of Hungarian, infamously difficult to learn & speak,” Sr. Staff Researcher at Google Deepmind Alex Polozov said on X (formerly Twitter). Great example of using AI tools to enhance well-known art creation process, not replace it.”

The Brutalist director Brady Corbet addressed the controversy in an interview with Indiewire.

“Adrien and Felicity’s performances are completely their own. They worked for months with dialect coach Tanera Marshall to perfect their accents,” Corbet said. “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.”

Corbet added that AI was used in post-production 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.”

For his part, Jancsó defended using AI in The Brutalist, emphasizing its role as a practical tool rather than a groundbreaking innovation.

“We should be having a very open discussion about what tools AI can provide us with,” he said. “There’s nothing in the film using AI that hasn’t been done before. It just makes the process a lot faster. We use AI to create these tiny little details that we didn’t have the money or the time to shoot.”

A case for AI voice enhancement

In May, during an interview at the Cannes Film Festival, Cyril Holtz, the sound mixer for Emilia Pérez, highlighted the practical applications of technologies like Respeecher, a voice and image cloning software to extend the vocal range of Gascon.

“It started as a plan B but became plan A,” Holtz said.

Respeecher has been used to clone the voices of iconic actors, including “It’s a Wonderful Life” star Jimmy Stewart, Elvis Presley, James Earl Jones, and Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty voice actor Miłogost “Milek” Reczek, who passed away in 2021.

“Voice actors are—and will always be—an essential part of quality AI voice synthesis,” Respeecher CEO Alex Serdiuk said in a statement posted on X.

“We developed Respeecher as an auxiliary tool that helps voice actors scale, monetize, and secure their voices. One of our guiding principles is ‘Empower, not replace.'”

Edited by Sebastian Sinclair