The organization behind the Oscars is for the first time addressing the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in performances and scripts for next year’s Academy Awards. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on Friday released updates across many categories, stressing the importance of human authorship while not banning AI.
The new rules also include significant changes to the international film category, expanding eligibility to include films that won top qualifying awards from prestigious film festivals such as Cannes, Venice and Toronto.
“As we do every year, we made a lot of, we think, really smart and progressive changes,” film academy CEO Bill Kramer said. “Obviously, as the academy becomes more global, we need to think about how we are inviting international films into the Oscars conversation.”
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The new rules state that “the tools neither help nor harm the chances of achieving a nomination,” and that the academy and each branch “will judge the achievement, taking into account the degree to which a human was at the heart of the creative authorship when choosing which movie to award.”
“Humans have to be at the center of the creative process,” academy president Lynette Howell Taylor said. “As AI continues to evolve, our conversations around AI will do so along with that. But for the academy, we are always going to put human authorship at the center of our awards eligibility process.”
When it comes to the eligibility of performances, only roles “demonstrably performed by humans with their consent” would be considered.
Meanwhile rules in screenplay categories state that “screenplays must be human-authored to be eligible.”
There have been increasing calls for an overhaul to the international film category — which had been criticized as unjust, outdated and subject to political interference. That has led to independent and dissident filmmakers often pointedly not being submitted to represent the country they are from.
Last year’s Palme d’Or-winner at Cannes, It Was Just an Accident from Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi, was not submitted as Iran’s official entry for the 98th Academy Awards, but France’s.
Under the new rules, It Was Just an Accident could be considered eligible, because it won the top Cannes prize and not because a country chose to submit it.
Festivals with eligible qualifying awards includes the Golden Lion at Venice, the Platform award at Toronto, the Berlin International Film Festival’s Golden Bear, the Busan International Film Festival’s best film award and the Sundance Film Festival’s World Cinema Grand Jury Prize.
All the international films would also be credited as the nominee, not the country or region, and the award would be accepted by the filmmaker. The director’s name would also be listed on the Oscar plaque, “after the film title and country if applicable.”
“As we become more global, as the filmmaking community becomes more global, I think it’s really about a focus on the filmmakers and less a focus of the country,” Kramer said.
The acting branch is catching up with the rest of the academy in allowing an actor to be nominated for more than one performance in a single category. This is standard practice in the other categories.
The organization also clarified the eligibility of original songs used during a film’s end credits. For songs in which the first music cue plays over the end credits, that song must overlap with at least the film’s last 15 seconds before the credits roll to be considered eligible.
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