As A24’s flagship contender this awards season, The Brutalist has already cemented its place in the cultural conversation, seemingly resonating with many of the guilds and award boards across the world. Its success underscores the power of bold, auteur-driven storytelling and serves as a testament to the creative heights that can be achieved even with constrained resources.
However, one of the ways that they have maintained this small budget is by utilising publicly available tools and taking advantage of one of the biggest growing ones – AI, specifically Generative AI, which is famously critiqued due to the way it functions, which is by learning from already existing art created by real artists and replicating and crafting these into something new.
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In a new interview with editor Dávid Jancsó for RedSharkNews, he revealed that AI was used for two parts of the production process on the film: for assisting in helping the actors sound more Hungarian with AI enhancements to their voice, and using it to create an entire scene towards the end of the movie to showcase a variety of drawings.
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Many people have already argued that relying on generative AI for such an important moment in The Brutalist diminishes the craftsmanship and human creativity that audiences expect in a film centered on architecture, considering that it involves a field deeply rooted in artistic vision and individuality. The use of AI here has sparked debates about the ethics of automation in art and cinema, particularly as it pertains to projects that pride themselves on being deeply personal or auteur-driven.
Adding fuel to the fire, the proud claims of a low budget now feel disingenuous, as it was not achieved by creative ingenuity as implied but rather morally dubious shortcuts. However, the reliance on AI shortcuts now casts that achievement in a different light, with many seeing it as a cost-cutting measure that compromises the film’s authenticity. For a movie centered on an architect’s vision and legacy, the use of AI to simulate the protagonist’s creations feels antithetical to the story’s core themes and message.
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Wait till you hear how they’ve used it in countless Marvel movies to speed up vfx
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That second paragraph reads like a genuine slop-tier YouTube short you’d hear someone blasting next to you at half volume in public.
Narrated by an unnaturally upbeat and grating TTS voice, of course.
One of the most interesting applications of AI I’ve seen for film recently is the ability to re-dub actors with their own voice in different languages while maintaining lip synch. That’s something that could have a positive effect on accessibility to the medium without the language barrier.
Seems like they fine tuned the voices to sound more authentic. Hungarian is a hard accent to do from what I understand and it’s not possible to fine tune voices without ai. They also used gen ai on one scene.
Apparently, the line between art and garbage is how it’s made.
What if instead, they had just hired a Hungarian actor for the part?
I’d rather people learn to accept AI and stop closing their eyes to it’s benefit.
So just erase the human element altogether and let the bots do the acting for us? Who needs real authenticity when you can have artificial authenticity at a fraction of the current effort.
Is that what I said? If you want to be a child, do it with someone else.
My original comment was about the human element of acting. Hire a Hungarian if you want authenticity, don’t hire Adrian Brody and just make him authentic with AI.
Your comment seemed to say we need to forget about all that and just focus on the benefits of AI.
I don’t know of any movies where Hollywood prioritized local actors unknown to the broader public over known actors with fake accents. The scenario you offer as an alternative simply doesn’t exist imo. We are talking about an industry that casted Scarjo as a Japanese girl.
In any case, the problem people are having isn’t about the directors not using local talent, it’s about them using AI. It’s technophobia.
If they didn’t care enough to do it authentically, why should I give a shit about their actor-accent auto tune.
No thanks, I’d rather refuse to learn anything and blindly accuse any useage of AI as “slop” despite never looking at it myself to judge it’s quality. How dare you accuse my opinion of being closed minded! I’ll have you know I formed that opinion myself after reading the opinions of others exclusively in my preferred bubble of the internet. How could I possibly be wrong?!
Apparently, the line between art and garbage is how it’s made.
Yeah no that’s the difference between craft and craft. Confusion about that is ripe both within the pro- and anti-AI crowd, on the one hand you have people who get dazzled by the results of their “big boobiez plz” prompting, not able to judge the resulting image even if they tried to, on the other side you have people taking on “big boobiez plz” commissions not realising that their derivative style, by-the-numbers composition, everything, is slop. Hand-made slop is still slop.
You can value craft for its own sake and that’s fine and proper but please don’t confuse it with art or I shall be referencing urinals on pedestals.
Hand-made slop will always be worth more than whatever comes out of google’s big pachinko machine. Art is communication. AI can’t communicate.
or I shall be referencing urinals on pedestals.
Why, because it’s vulgar? Prefer your pristine statues of roman soldiers, do you?
Why, because it’s vulgar?
Because it is an ordinary object elevated to the dignity of a work of art by the mere choice of an artist. It’s what readymades are all about. Granted, there’s also craft involved, e.g. Duchamp is said to have browsed through quite a couple of bicycle wheels to find one that was appropriately banal for his intentions, but that, as far as we know, wasn’t the case with Fountain (said urinal on a pedestal). He just had a point to make about the nature of art and bought the next best urinal, put it on a pedestal, and signed it with a random pseudonym to not have people fawn over his signature.
That was art. Since then, tons of self-professed conceptual artists have produced nothing of value, producing slop, repeating the same point ad nauseam, worse, thinking that the point was to be crass and vulgar. Works because they’re getting applause from idiots. Banksy pointed that out quite brilliantly when he used the medium of art auctions to paint a picture of rich nitwits jerking off to being given the finger.
Prefer your pristine statues of roman soldiers, do you?
Check your bite reflexes. That’s not to say that the Romans didn’t know a thing or fifty about sculpture but I know exactly what you’re trying to imply.
AI can’t communicate.
And neither can a porcelain factory. And neither can plenty of people, TBH.
Hand-made slop will always be worth more than whatever comes out of google’s big pachinko machine.
“Hand-made socks will always be worth more than whatever comes out of a knitting machine”. Worth what, to whom, and are you even using Merino. Can a piece of coal have value if it’s not mined by children?
I’m a busy man with a busy schedule, so I had chatgpt summarize all that for me:
The comment argues that the value of art lies in the artist’s choice to elevate an ordinary object, criticizing modern conceptual art for being vulgar and unoriginal, while also questioning the value placed on handcrafted items over machine-produced ones.
Uh, my guy, people love handcrafted things. You ever seen E t s y?
I’m a busy man with a busy schedule so I’m going to quote myself as you demonstrably can’t be bothered to read:
You can value craft for its own sake and that’s fine and proper but please don’t confuse it with art or I shall be referencing urinals on pedestals.
Maybe, you know, you shouldn’t rely on AI in the context of understanding perspectives on what is and what is not art. Just a thought.
I am not a big fan of LLMs but don’t see a problem with this (or the last confected outrage about Late Night With The Devil). Banning AI in movies is going to be like attempting to put a genie back in its bottle since there are so many potential applications. Maybe indie film makers can advetise their movies as Not AI so that people who are bothered by it can seek those out.
I’ve shared this before, but on a podcast Greig Fraser (cinematographer for Dune, The Batman) basically said, “AI is happening, and we as artists can either embrace it and decide how to use it tastefully, or investors/producers will decide for us.”
As if one tried banning CGI in movies to protect real life specialFX geniuses.
How many movies are there now without CGI?
Exactly.
The current moral panic is trying to say: “Digital tools in filmmaking are fine – but not neural nets!” It’s so silly.
A24 has been cooked ever since they took the liberal stance on Civil War
Is Civil War a liberal-leaning movie?
Filmmakers are going to be using neural nets for shots here and there. That’s going to be the norm in the short term. So what?
Yeah low budget used in conjunctivitis with A.I. is like that meetaa guy saying low performers are being fired while saying A.I. coding is going to happen at meetaa in 2025.
low budget pinkeye is the worst.
I prefer that classy pinkeye. I put gold leaf on my gunk sealing my eyelid shut.
