Francesca Rudkin: Love it or hate it, AI is going to be part of our lives

There is a lot going on in the world this week.   This Friday The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences provides some lighthearted relief from the world's challenges by announcing the Oscar nominees for the 2025 Academy Awards.   The nominees were due to be announced on January 18th, then January 20th, before being delayed again, giving those impacted by the fires still raging in Southern California more time to vote.   But as filmmakers, actors and the masterful craftspeople responsible for making some of the best films of the year wait patiently to see whether they get the nomination nod from their peers, a prickly conversation is brewing about AI.   The latest controversy in film is around the use of AI in two potential nominees, The Brutalist and Emila Perez, which both won at the Golden Globes. These two Oscar front runners are dealing with a backlash after it was revealed they used voice-cloning to enhance actors’ performances.  In The Brutalist, Adrien Brody and Felicity Jones play Jewish Hungarians who survive the Nazi camps and escape to the US. The actors spent 2 months working with a dialect coach to perfect their accents, but the filmmakers wanted their Hungarian to sound perfect so added individual sounds and letters to both Brody and Jones’s Hungarian-language dialogue to perfect it.   This has caused quite an uproar and The Brutalist director Brady Corbet was forced to issue a statement to Hollywood trade publications saying “Adrien and Felicity’s performances are completely their own.” He went on to say, “The aim was 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.”  Their performances are extraordinary, the film stunning, ambitious and audacious – and if a tool was used to tweak their Hungarian along the way, well, Hungarians are probably grateful.   With Emila Perez, it has emerged AI cloning was used to enhance the singing voice of Emilia Pérez’s Karla Sofía Gascón, to increase the range of Gascón’s vocal register. Their singing was then blended with that of Camille, the French pop star who co-wrote the film’s score.  People are upset. Really? In the film Elvis, Austin Butler’s voice is mixed with Elvis’s. Marilyn Monroe didn’t hit her own high notes. Zac Efron had a ghost singer in High School Musical. Films have been tricking us for years. But suddenly, because it’s AI, everyone is up in arms about it.   And it’s not just correcting accents and singing voices where AI is used. Its already embedded in everything from production to writing to visual effects – just don’t expect anyone to shout it from the rooftops.   Some say it’s more of a PR problem than a tech problem, and that it’s just another tool like CGI to be used to make a better film.   Obviously, there are concerns about the prolific use of AI – no one wants to see whole sectors of the industry replaced, such as writers, graphic artists or background actors. It's often the lowest paid on the call sheet who suffer. So, it’s up to the industry to draw the line and work towards safeguards and regulation so the industry can find a way to use AI for good.   And love it or hate it, AI is going to be part of our lives - in ways we can already see and ways we can’t imagine. Just don’t let the controversy ruin a good film for you.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.