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There are some awards that represent the true pinnacle of one’s craft.
They are so synonymous with success that their attainment solidifies the awardee as one of the best in their field. For a musician, it’s the Grammy. For a college football player, it’s the Heisman.
And for an actor, that award is an Oscar.
Chief among all the Oscars that can be won is the Academy Award for Best Actor.
The list of men nominated for this award represents some of the greatest actors of all time; the list of men who have won it is even greater. It includes legends such as Tom Hanks, Marlon Brando and Daniel Day-Lewis.
On March 2, 2025, the Academy gave the award to Adrien Brody for his performance in “The Brutalist.” Brody, who had already won the award in 2003 for his performance in “The Pianist,” played the Hungarian-Jewish architect László Tóth. The three-and-a-half-hour film follows Tóth’s immigration to and subsequent struggle in 1940s America.
Brody fought against a field of memorable performances to get the award. Against him were Timothée Chalamet — who had spent six years learning guitar to play Bob Dylan in “A Complete Unknown” — and Sebastian Stan, who masterfully embodied the mannerisms of Donald Trump while not veering into caricature for his role in “The Apprentice.”
But, the sad truth: Adrien Brody shouldn’t have won the award.
The film brought in Ukrainian company Respeecher to use artificial intelligence for “voice conversion technology.” Although the company explained it was only used to “polish a few tricky Hungarian vowels in Brody’s existing performance,” Brody’s performance nonetheless utilized AI.
The use of AI in Brody’s experience, and the fact a performance benefiting from AI earned the premier award in the acting world, sets a dangerous precedent for the future of acting.
The defense for AI in Brody’s performance was that he was incapable of fully adopting the Hungarian accent. While that is understandable — the Hungarian accent is one of the hardest to learn — it does not excuse the use of AI.
If the authenticity of the character’s accent was so important, then the company should have used a Hungarian actor. Through moments like these, when films require precise accents, actors who would otherwise be unknown should be brought to the spotlight.
Actors who currently thrive in the films of their home country may never have the chance to make it to the international stage simply because film companies opt to cast well-known actors and use AI to create the accent.
The use of AI in “The Brutalist” insulted the art of acting, of being able to assimilate into a role so well the audience cannot tell. In a year when another actor spent years learning a new instrument and another studied footage from the 1970s to learn the mannerisms of one of the most caricatured men of our time, the award was given to the actor who fell back on AI to fix his performance.
The award created a dangerous precedent.
Today, AI is used to slightly improve the small shortcomings of Brody’s accents. Tomorrow, it may be used to completely create the accent.
Contact Timothy Dillehay at tdillehay@alligator.org. Follow him on X @timothydilleh.
Timothy Dillehay is a political science and history sophomore and a Spring 2026 Opinions Columnist for The Alligator. He writes on issues related to university administration and student government. In his free time, Timothy enjoys journaling, reading comics and classics, and reviewing films on his Letterboxd.
