**Director Defends Use of AI in ‘The Brutalist’ Accents**
The director of *The Brutalist* has defended the performances of lead actors Adrien Brody and Felicity Jones after it was revealed that artificial intelligence was utilized to enhance their Hungarian accents. Brady Corbet emphasized that the performances were “completely their own.”
Brody stars as Laszlo Toth, a Hungarian architect striving to rebuild his life in the US post-World War Two, while Jones portrays his wife, Erzsebet. The film recently won three Golden Globes and is anticipated to receive Oscar nominations.
In a statement, Corbet clarified that while Brody and Jones had “worked for months” with a dialect coach to perfect their accents, technology from Respeecher was only used for “Hungarian language dialogue editing.” Respeecher, based in Ukraine, offers filmmakers advanced voice cloning solutions.
Corbet explained that the AI was specifically employed to refine certain vowels and letters for accuracy, asserting that “no English language was changed.” He described the process as “manual,” conducted by the sound team and Respeecher during post-production.
He stressed that the intention was to maintain the authenticity of the actors’ performances in another language, rather than to alter them. Additionally, production designer Judy Becker and her team did not use AI for the architectural elements featured in the film’s closing sequence.
Corbet’s comments followed an interview with editor David Jansco, who noted the challenges of perfecting Brody and Jones’s Hungarian accents. As a native Hungarian, Jansco acknowledged the difficulty of the language and explained that attempts to use automated dialogue replacement (ADR) had not been successful. Ultimately, they opted to enhance the actors’ voices with AI software, ensuring that their performances remained intact.
