Oscars Controversy: Can AI Enhance Art, or Is It Stealing the Spotlight?

• Artificial intelligence, used in Oscars-nominated movies, has inspired quite a debate. Critics have questioned AI’s use, suggesting that it might even wane authenticity. Some filmmakers, with an entirely different perspective, argue AI makes films more realistic.
• It seems sad that AI is being used to produce movies in Hollywood. One argument that comes to one’s mind is how the AI creates a space void of any human creativity, demanding compliance with standard ethics and norms of prediction in producing entertainment.

For so long, Hollywood has been thought of as the epitome of authenticity. Either through acting the authentic embrace of the infinite precision arts or the director’s capacity to put the raw emotion of life in the most life-like sense. Thus, the audience becomes the bearer of authenticity. The consequence of the diversity that could be felt from the power of reality as pure illusion has quite literally become extraordinarily hot, and AI has unarguably become a subject that demands excessive explorations.

There has been some serious backlash concerning some of the principal players in this year’s Oscars run, The Brutalist, Emilia Pérez, and A Complete Unknown. On one hand, some regard AI as one of those great aces. On the other side, the critics claim this is like signing on free will to the dark side after AI quietly replaces the human league.

When AI Meets Hollywood

It all began in January, when The Brutalist, which featured Adrien Brody and Felicity Jones, used AI voice technology. Both actors had been for months researching Hungarian to work on their accents for the film, so it was not retained in its raw form. The performances came out inaccurate, and rather than altering the performances or reshooting them, the filmmakers used Respeecher—an AI voice cloning tool—to polish up the lengthy Hungarian dialogues.

When word spread about this on social media, the detractors started coming. Brady Corbet, the director, argued saying that all these were for maintaining the authenticity rather than lengthening the list of offended sentiments, but betrayal was often what people suspected at first. Did those sound like actors then? Did the AI do a little work on their behalf?

The situation is the same all around. There’s been much discussion of AI usage for enhancing the singing voice of Karla Sofía Gascón in Emilia Pérez, leading the Oscars nominations this year. A couple of quick shots in A Complete Unknown, Timothée Chalamet’s Bob Dylan biopic, received the AI visual effects, and even Dune: Part Two employed machine learning to finalise the blue eyes of the Fremen characters. The question, now, is not whether the films are being made better with AI enhancements but whether AI undermines the very human performances the audiences have come to love.

AI Threatening Immersive Cinema

Cinema AI is not just about perfecting accents or sharp edges of visualisation, but more about the availability of technology to take over from the real actors.

I’m not entirely aware that Hollywood underlines this anxiety about AI force-fed automation. Writers and a coalition of acting guilds had to put their foot down almost literally to establish and gain protections against AI-generated scripts and performances, a cause to which more socially empowered artists could react. Artists also worried about advanced animating motions in a two-way feedback relationship, whereas the visual effects artist digitised by the actor could have added movement and scenery created by AI. Voice actors, in particular, whose craft is almost married with art forms and who work directly with writers on the interpretation of performances, pairing the human voices with graphical characters, have little to no concern about how AI enters their profession.

It’s not merely about the work going to machines; it’s about the soul of cinema. Can the work truly have “authenticity” so long as AI has laid a hand on it? Will SF start to use AI more so that it can cheapen the motion-capture assets rather than hiring theatre-trained individuals?

Even in the minority cases where it is used just a little, there have been major pushbacks from the fans. Late Night with the Devil in late 2020 and the Civil War were spoken about for using AI in promo creation, despite that it had very little influence on the final delivery. It was a definite statement: the public needs clear lines about these things.

The Role of Art in AI

A rule that could soon be considered by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences would be for producers to inform audiences if an AI was ever used while making their films. This little measure could somewhat ease the apprehensions on either side, but it would not simply put an end to the debate.

Some people in the industry are beginning to react. When A24 released its horror film Heretic, they made a point to announce, “No generative AI was used in the making of this film,” at the very end of the credits. Soon, because of the rising number of applications of AI in the film industry, all films may begin using this line. This will act almost like an industry trademark of quality for entertainment that is “human-made.”

The Outcome

AI is staying put in films, but so will the revolting. Most filmmakers find it merely a tool, but for many audiences and some industry professionals, AI is a sea change in the whole process of filmmaking. While one needs to push AI into popular practice above the line, another side will war to keep the heart of storytelling in place. Because it’s still much easier to argue that no algorithm can challenge any magic of a truly human performance.