Oscars Ban AI for Acting and Writing Awards

Oscars Restricts AI for Acting, Writing The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced Friday that only human-performed acting and human-authored writing will be eligible for Oscar nominations, effective immediately. This decision clarifies eligibility requirements for the film industry's most prestigious awards amid increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI) technology in content creation.

The Academy emphasized that these changes are "substantive" and aim to ensure human creative authorship remains central to award consideration.

The updated rules specify that acting must be "demonstrably performed by humans" and writing "must be human-authored." This move follows recent instances of AI being used to generate or recreate human work, such as an AI-recreated actor for a lead role and the creation of entirely AI-generated performers. Additionally, the use of AI in scriptwriting was a key issue during recent Hollywood writers' strikes, and lawsuits have been filed against AI companies for alleged copyright infringement by studios, actors, and authors.

While restricting AI for acting and writing awards, the Academy did not issue a broader ban on AI use in filmmaking. It stated that the use of AI tools in other aspects of production "neither help nor harm the chances of achieving a nomination." The Academy indicated it would judge achievements based on the degree of human creative authorship and reserves the right to request more information regarding generative AI use if questions arise.

This approach distinguishes AI tools, which automate tasks, from traditional computer-generated imagery (CGI), which is largely considered a manual, human-driven process.