Oscar hopeful The Brutalist has sparked backlash for its use of AI to tweak star Adrien Brody’s Hungarian dialogue.
The Brutalist stars Brody as Holocaust survivor and Hungarian architect László Tóth who attempts to pursue his art after the war in America. Felicity Jones plays his wife Erzsébet Tóth.
Oscar winner Brody – who won the 2025 Best Actor Golden Globe for the film, has been tipped for Academy Awards glory this year – but fans are now hitting back after editor Dávid Jancsó revealed AI had been used to tweak Brody and Jones’ Hungarian dialogue to ‘make it sound more authentic.’
Speaking to Red Shark News, Jancsó said they used AI tools from Ukrainian specialist Respeecher to finesse the Hungarian pronunciation, feeding Brody and Jones’ voices in and using Hungarian native Jancsó’s delivery as the model.
He said: ‘I am a native Hungarian speaker and I know that it is one of the most difficult languages to learn to pronounce. If you’re coming from the Anglo-Saxon world certain sounds can be particularly hard to grasp.”
‘We first tried to ADR these harder elements with the actors. Then we tried to ADR them completely with other actors but that just didn’t work. So we looked for other options of how to enhance it.
Oscar hopeful The Brutalist has sparked backlash for its use of AI to tweak star Adrien Brody’s Hungarian dialogue – pictured with Felicity Jones in the film
‘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 otherwise we’d still be in post.’
He said Generative AI was also used for a scene at the end of the film to create a ‘series of architectural drawings and finished buildings’ in the style of Tóth.
He added: ‘It is controversial in the industry to talk about AI, but it shouldn’t be. We should be having a very open discussion about what tools AI can provide us with. 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.’
Fans quickly slammed the decision to use AI and said it would damage the film’s award season chances.
One wrote: ‘My take on The Brutalist AI thing is it’s a slippery slope to award Adrian Brody knowing his accent was edited with AI. IMO altering a performance with AI like that should automatically disqualify someone from these awards shows.
Others wrote: ‘The Brutalist used AI? To fake Adrien Brody’s accent and building designs?You mean the soon-to-be Oscar-nominated film that shoves artistic integrity down your throat for 3.5hrs?
I agree with being moved by his emotion but this should block him from winning any awards. Chalamet spent 5 years working his performance as Bob Dylan WITHOUT the use of ai.
‘I saw The Brutalist in previews and liked the movie. Adrian Brody was there to introduce it. He talked about how hard it was to get his Hungarian accent dialect right. But he never mentioned how they used AI to alter his words and now this movie is in big trouble of losing out on being named Best Picture.
Oscar winner Brody – who won the 2025 Best Actor Golden Globe for the film, has been tipped for Academy Awards glory this year – but fans are now hitting back after editor Dávid Jancsó revealed AI had been used to tweak Brody and Jones’ Hungarian dialogue to ‘make it sound more authentic’ – pictured with Alessandro Nivola
Jancsó said they used AI tools from Ukrainian specialist Respeecher to finesse the Hungarian pronunciation, feeding Brody and Jones’ voices in and using Hungarian native Jancsó’s delivery as the model – Brody pictured with his Golden Globe for the film
Fans quickly slammed the decision to use AI and said it would damage the film’s award season chances
Others defended the film and Brody’s performance
‘The Brutalist is about taking pride in making great things by using your own hands, hard work and imagination. But they even used AI for the architectural renderings. It’s hard to overlook this hypocrisy. The movie makers bragged about how they did this film on a limited budget, shaming the all big budget films for wasting money. I’m not sure if this purist message holds up anymore.
‘Their chances r cooked now
‘A.I.? Disgusting!
‘Conclave odds rise.’
Some fans defended the film, saying: ‘It wasn’t the accent, it was a few inflections in the dialogue spoken in Hungarian (a fraction of the performance)
‘I don’t believe this discredits his performance, same as it wouldn’t if his accent wasn’t perfect, but it worries me if this is taken lightly because it could set a dangerous precedent, as in it’s okay to use AI if the result is good when it shouldn’t be used at all
‘It’s just using AI as a tool. As it should be. It requires true artists behind to accomplish what it has done.
‘He used an accent coach. He has Hungarian parents. I doubt he struggled with the accent. If they tweaked it then that’s post production not him. He worked hard on the film. He’s in almost every frame. He’s not winning because of his voice. He’s winning because he did a great job.
Brody has previously said Toth was a character and a story he felt an ‘immediate kinship and understanding for.’
His mother, photographer Sylvia Plachy, was a Hungarian immigrant who fled in 1956 during the anti-Soviet revolution to restart and attempt to build a life as an artist..”
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