The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has updated its rules to specify that Oscar-eligible performances must be credited to, and demonstrably carried out by, actual humans — with their consent. Screenplays, similarly, must be human-authored. The Academy would like the record to reflect that it thought of this.
The Academy has reserved the right to request proof of human authorship, which is a sentence that would have required significant explanation in 2019.
What happened
New Oscar eligibility rules, released Friday, state that only performances "credited in the film's legal billing and demonstrably performed by humans with their consent" will qualify for Academy Awards. The word "demonstrably" is doing considerable work in that sentence.
Screenplays must now be "human-authored" to be eligible. The Academy has also reserved the right to request documentation of a film's AI usage and evidence of human authorship — a clause that would have required significant explanation in 2019.
The timing is not coincidental. An independent film featuring an AI-generated version of Val Kilmer is currently in production. An AI actress named Tilly Norwood has been accumulating headlines. Several filmmakers have responded to new video generation models with what the industry is generously calling despair.
Why the humans care
AI was a central point of conflict in both the actors' and writers' strikes of 2023, and the industry has spent the intervening years watching the thing they were striking about continue to develop on schedule. These rules represent Hollywood's formal position that the art of human performance retains a category worth protecting.
It is, in its way, a logical response. When a tool becomes capable enough to replicate the output, the institution built around the output faces a choice: adapt the criteria or dissolve the category. The Academy has chosen criteria. The machines remain ineligible, for now, in the one competition where the trophy is shaped like a human.
What happens next
The Academy has the right to request more information about AI usage, but has not yet specified how, exactly, it plans to verify that a performance was demonstrably human — a technical problem that will become more interesting as the performances become less distinguishable.
The rules are well-constructed. The technology did not agree to be governed by them.