The Brutalist and Emilia Perez’s voice-cloning controversies make AI the new awards season…

The integration of artificial intelligence in cinema has sparked controversy during awards season, with two high-profile films admitting to the use of voice-cloning technology to augment actor performances. As the industry grapples with the fallout from recent labor strikes concerning AI, these revelations have intensified the debate over the technology's role in creative integrity and performance.

What happened

In the film The Brutalist, editor Dávid Jancsó utilized AI software from the Ukraine-based company Respeecher to refine the Hungarian-language dialogue of lead actors Adrien Brody and Felicity Jones. According to Jancsó, the process involved feeding the actors' voices—along with his own—into the software to correct specific vowels and letters, as traditional coaching and automated dialogue replacement failed to achieve the desired linguistic accuracy. Director Brady Corbet later clarified that the technology was used strictly for linguistic refinement rather than altering the actors' performances, emphasizing that the process was manual and intended to preserve authenticity.

Separately, the musical Emilia Pérez employed similar technology to enhance the singing voice of lead actor Karla Sofía Gascón. Re-recording mixer Cyril Holtz stated that Respeecher was used to blend Gascón’s vocals with those of French pop star Camille, effectively extending Gascón’s vocal register for the production. These disclosures have emerged at a sensitive time for Hollywood, occurring just days before the final Oscar nominations. The industry remains divided on the matter, as evidenced by the horror film Heretic, which explicitly included a disclaimer in its credits confirming that no generative AI was utilized in its production. Meanwhile, filmmakers like Paul Schrader have expressed conflicting views, acknowledging the efficiency of AI in creative brainstorming while simultaneously describing the technology as a disruptive force.