PUTTING THE ARTIFICIAL IN THE ORGANIC

HEAD of the 97th Academy Awards later today, it appears that the ABC of the ceremony will be Anora, The Brutal-ist and Conclave, despite their brief brushes with controversy over the lack of intimacy coordinators, use of artificial intelligence and a jaundiced portrayal of the Catholic church, respectively.

- NAMRATA JOSHI

Brady Corbet's period epic The Brutalist, about Hungarian architect and holocaust survivor László Tóth (Adrien Brody) who emigrated to the US, has bagged 10 nominations. The praise for its ambition and sweep, technical finesse and emotional resonance notwithstanding, it got mired in a fracas around one of cinema's biggest bugbears—AI.

In January this year, the film's editor Dávid Jancsó disclosed in an interview that AI voice-generating technology was used to correct the accents of Brady and Felicity Jones, who plays journalist Erzsébet Tóth, the architect's wife.

Following widespread criticism and questioning of the authenticity of Brody and Jones's acts, Corbet had to issue a statement underlining that their performances were completely their own. "They worked for months with dialect coach Tanera Marshall to perfect their accents. Innovative Respeecher technology was used in Hungarian language dialogue editing only, specifically to refine certain vowels and letters for accuracy. No English was changed."