You Need to Be Human to Win an Oscar, Says Academy

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has spoken: you need to be human to win an Oscar. In upcoming years’ acting categories, only roles that are “demonstrably performed by humans with their consent will be considered eligible,” according to Vanity Fair.

Meanwhile, in the screenplay categories, “the rules codify that screenplays must be human-authored to be eligible.” In addition, the Academy, which adapts its rules every year, retained the right to request additional information about how AI was used and the extent of human authorship in any project that uses generative AI.

To be clear, this doesn’t mean that AI-infused movies can’t win Oscars; the rules seem to allow AI to be used in some areas, like visual effects, for example.

This isn’t necessarily a case of the Academy being extraordinarily forward-looking. We’re starting to see big-name, award-winning actors already being recreated by AI on screen. The late Top Gun actor Val Kilmer is soon set to appear in the upcoming historical action-adventure film As Deep as the Grave, with AI being used to recreate the actor, who had been cast in the movie before his death.

In addition, we’ve seen plenty of other high-profile AI resurrections of award-winning actors. In 2024, the late Ian Holm, known for The Lord of the Rings, appeared in digital form in Alien: Romulus four years after his death, a move some critics dubbed “digital necromancy.” Holm was nominated for an Academy Award for one of his real-life performances, in 1981’s sports drama Chariots of Fire.

Though we haven’t seen any openly AI-generated screenplays feature in mainstream Hollywood fare, plenty of independent movies have appeared that used entirely AI-made scripts.

2016’s Sunspring featured an entirely AI-generated screenplay performed by human actors. Though it didn’t make it to the Oscars, it received positive feedback from critics and racked up over a million views on YouTube after premiering at the London Sci-Fi Film Festival. A follow-up short film written by the same AI bot, 2017’s It’s No Game, featured Baywatch actor David Hasselhoff.

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