The Most Mind-Numbing Backlash of the Oscar Season Is Here

If you were on social media over the holiday weekend--and really, what better use of a holiday weekend is there--you might have noticed a controversy brewing around the use of artificial intelligence in The Brutalist, Brady Corbet's sprawling saga about a Jewish architect who escapes the Holocaust and immigrates to the U.S. to ply his trade. If you didn't happen to catch the initial backlash, good news: By Monday, Variety, the Hollywood Reporter, and Deadline had all picked up the story, and by this morning the internet was awash in aggregations and explainers, all blossoming two days before the Oscar nominations are announced. The flap traced back to an article published by RedShark News on Jan. 11--an eternity ago in internet time--that actually praised the film's "subtle and sensitive" use of artificial intelligence. Editor Dávid Jancsó detailed how the production used a tool called Respeecher to enhance "certain sounds" in Adrien Brody and Felicity Jones' Hungarian dialogue. Jancsó, a native speaker, explained that Hungarian is "one of the most difficult languages to learn to pronounce," and even after working with a dialogue coach, there were still lingering inaccuracies.