During the “off season” of the Oscars race, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences likes to make updates to its established rules. In 2025, that’s included the announcement of a new category (Stunt Design coming in 2028!) and now, as part of a series of updates on changes to the Academy Awards, a new statement on how using generative AI might affect a movie’s awards chances.
The Academy’s statement on generative AI doesn’t get too deep into the ethics involved or best practices for its implementation, though. Instead, it reads:
With regard to Generative Artificial Intelligence and other digital tools used in the making of the film, the tools neither help nor harm the chances of achieving a nomination. 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.
AI became a major talking point during the 2024-2025 awards season, when it was revealed that major contender The Brutalist had implemented the technology in two separate ways: It was used to create drawings meant to be the work of architect László Tóth, played by Adrian Brody, and additionally, AI tools were used to tweak the Hungarian dialogue of Brody and co-star Felicity Jones, to ensure that their accents sounded authentically Hungarian.
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The Netflix musical drama Emilia Pérez also made use of AI to “refine and perfect specific notes and sounds” for star Karla Sofía Gascón’s singing voice. It’s hard to say to what degree the discussion around both movies’ use of AI affected their success at the 97th Academy Awards. For one thing, the Emilia Pérez campaign had some other issues it was dealing with — people were a lot more bothered by Gascón’s social media posts than they were by her singing voice needing some artificial help.
Additionally, while The Brutalist was a strong Best Picture contender before losing out to Anora, it still won three Oscars that night: Best Cinematography, Best Score, and — notably — Lead Actor. Adrian Brody ended up beating out actors like Ralph Fiennes and Colman Domingo, whose performances did not feature any known AI influence.
The Academy’s new statement on AI doesn’t go so far as to actively forbid the use of AI. However, the comment about “the degree to which a human was at the heart of the creative authorship” does indicate that non-technical applications of AI as a tool won’t be seen that generously. Future Oscar hopefuls might go ahead and tweak an actor’s accents… But maybe hire an artist to draw some actual art.
Content shared from consequence.net.