As A24’s flagship contender this awards season, The Brutalist has already cemented its place in the cultural conversation, seemingly resonating with many of the guilds and award boards across the world. Its success underscores the power of bold, auteur-driven storytelling and serves as a testament to the creative heights that can be achieved even with constrained resources.
However, one of the ways that they have maintained this small budget is by utilising publicly available tools and taking advantage of one of the biggest growing ones – AI, specifically Generative AI, which is famously critiqued due to the way it functions, which is by learning from already existing art created by real artists and replicating and crafting these into something new.
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In a new interview with editor Dávid Jancsó for RedSharkNews, he revealed that AI was used for two parts of the production process on the film: for assisting in helping the actors sound more Hungarian with AI enhancements to their voice, and using it to create an entire scene towards the end of the movie to showcase a variety of drawings.
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Many people have already argued that relying on generative AI for such an important moment in The Brutalist diminishes the craftsmanship and human creativity that audiences expect in a film centered on architecture, considering that it involves a field deeply rooted in artistic vision and individuality. The use of AI here has sparked debates about the ethics of automation in art and cinema, particularly as it pertains to projects that pride themselves on being deeply personal or auteur-driven.
Adding fuel to the fire, the proud claims of a low budget now feel disingenuous, as it was not achieved by creative ingenuity as implied but rather morally dubious shortcuts. However, the reliance on AI shortcuts now casts that achievement in a different light, with many seeing it as a cost-cutting measure that compromises the film’s authenticity. For a movie centered on an architect’s vision and legacy, the use of AI to simulate the protagonist’s creations feels antithetical to the story’s core themes and message.
Hand-made slop will always be worth more than whatever comes out of google’s big pachinko machine. Art is communication. AI can’t communicate.
Why, because it’s vulgar? Prefer your pristine statues of roman soldiers, do you?
Because it is an ordinary object elevated to the dignity of a work of art by the mere choice of an artist. It’s what readymades are all about. Granted, there’s also craft involved, e.g. Duchamp is said to have browsed through quite a couple of bicycle wheels to find one that was appropriately banal for his intentions, but that, as far as we know, wasn’t the case with Fountain (said urinal on a pedestal). He just had a point to make about the nature of art and bought the next best urinal, put it on a pedestal, and signed it with a random pseudonym to not have people fawn over his signature.
That was art. Since then, tons of self-professed conceptual artists have produced nothing of value, producing slop, repeating the same point ad nauseam, worse, thinking that the point was to be crass and vulgar. Works because they’re getting applause from idiots. Banksy pointed that out quite brilliantly when he used the medium of art auctions to paint a picture of rich nitwits jerking off to being given the finger.
Check your bite reflexes. That’s not to say that the Romans didn’t know a thing or fifty about sculpture but I know exactly what you’re trying to imply.
And neither can a porcelain factory. And neither can plenty of people, TBH.
“Hand-made socks will always be worth more than whatever comes out of a knitting machine”. Worth what, to whom, and are you even using Merino. Can a piece of coal have value if it’s not mined by children?
I’m a busy man with a busy schedule, so I had chatgpt summarize all that for me:
Uh, my guy, people love handcrafted things. You ever seen E t s y?
I’m a busy man with a busy schedule so I’m going to quote myself as you demonstrably can’t be bothered to read:
Maybe, you know, you shouldn’t rely on AI in the context of understanding perspectives on what is and what is not art. Just a thought.