Only acting performed by humans, and writing authored by humans, will be eligible.
Only human-performed acting and human-authored writing qualify for Oscar nominations under new Academy rules issued Friday. The decision follows high-profile AI applications like recreating deceased actor Val Kilmer and entirely synthetic actors, amid ongoing copyright lawsuits from Hollywood creators.
- Academy issued updated Oscar eligibility rules on Friday requiring acting to be "demonstrably performed by humans" and writing to be "human-authored"
- Val Kilmer, who died in 2025, is being recreated with AI technology for an upcoming film
- AI tools remain permitted in other filmmaking aspects; human creative authorship is the determining factor
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has updated Oscar eligibility rules to exclude AI-generated acting and writing, requiring both to be demonstrably human-created as AI use in filmmaking expands.
On Friday, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences drew a line in the sand. In updated eligibility rules for the Oscars, the organization that governs Hollywood's most prestigious awards made explicit what had never needed saying before: only acting performed by humans, and writing authored by humans, would be eligible for nomination.
The timing was not accidental. Over the past year, artificial intelligence has begun to reshape what filmmaking can do. Val Kilmer, the actor who died in 2025, is being recreated as a digital performer for an upcoming film—his likeness and voice reconstructed by algorithms trained on decades of his work. Elsewhere, a London-based actor and comedian named Eline van der Velden announced she had created an entirely synthetic AI actor, a being that existed only in code, and was positioning it to become a global star. These were not hypothetical scenarios anymore. They were happening.
The Academy called the new requirements a "substantive" change, and the language matters. For decades, the organization had never needed to specify that awards should go to humans. The assumption was so foundational it went unstated. But the ground had shifted. Large language models—the engines powering modern AI—had been trained on vast libraries of human-created text, images, and video. They could now generate plausible performances and prose. The question of what counted as authorship, what counted as creation, had become genuinely complicated.
The film industry had already begun to fight back through the courts. Hollywood studios, actors, and authors had filed lawsuits against AI companies, claiming copyright infringement. They argued that these systems had been trained on their work without permission, that the outputs were derivative theft. The Academy's new rules were a different kind of response—not legal, but categorical. They were saying: this is what we will recognize. This is what we will honor.
But the Academy did not ban AI from filmmaking altogether. That would have been simpler, perhaps, but also blunt. Instead, the organization created a hierarchy of creative work. Outside of acting and writing, if a filmmaker used AI tools—in visual effects, in sound design, in editing—those tools would "neither help nor harm the chances of achieving a nomination." What mattered was the degree to which a human remained at the heart of the creative decision-making. The Academy reserved the right to ask questions, to demand documentation of human authorship, to investigate on a case-by-case basis.
This distinction between AI as a tool and AI as an author echoed an older debate in filmmaking. Computer-generated imagery had been part of cinema since the 1990s, and no one had seriously proposed banning it from awards consideration. But CGI, the Academy's logic suggested, was fundamentally different. It required human artists to design, to refine, to perfect. It was labor-intensive and hands-on. Generative AI, by contrast, was designed to automate—to take a prompt and produce an output with minimal human intervention. The difference was not technical. It was philosophical. It was about whether a human being had made a choice, or whether a machine had made it for them.
What happens next remains uncertain. The rules are now in place, but they will be tested. Filmmakers will push at the boundaries. Questions will arise about what counts as "demonstrably performed" or "human-authored" when AI has been involved in the process. The Academy will have to make judgments, draw distinctions, defend its choices. The line it drew on Friday was clear enough for now. Whether it will hold is another question entirely.
Citas Notables
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.— Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
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Why did the Academy feel the need to specify "human" acting and writing now, when they never had to before?
Because the technology crossed a threshold. For the first time, AI could plausibly generate both performances and prose that looked like the real thing. The assumption that awards went to humans was so obvious it didn't need stating—until it did.
But they didn't ban AI from filmmaking entirely. Why allow it in some places and not others?
Because banning it entirely would have been impossible to enforce and philosophically inconsistent. AI as a tool—like a camera or a microphone—is neutral. What matters is whether a human made the creative choices. That's harder to define, but it's the honest distinction.
The lawsuits from actors and writers—are those about copyright, or about something deeper?
Both. On the surface, it's copyright infringement. These systems were trained on their work without permission. But underneath is a question about what authorship means. If a machine generates something based on patterns learned from your work, who owns it? Who gets credit? The legal system is still figuring that out.
Val Kilmer being recreated as a digital actor—does that feel like a violation to you, or just the future?
It's both, maybe. There's something unsettling about a deceased person being brought back as code, performing in new films they never made. But there's also something poignant about it. The technology exists. The question is whether we use it, and under what conditions. The Academy's answer is: not for awards.
What happens when someone submits a film where it's genuinely unclear how much AI was involved?
That's when the real work begins. The Academy says it will ask questions, demand documentation. But how do you prove human authorship in a world where the tools are designed to hide their own workings? That's the problem no rule can fully solve.