The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has issued updated Oscar eligibility rules on Friday, specifying that only acting “demonstrably performed by humans” and writing that “must be human-authored” can be considered for Academy Award nominations.

The Academy described the requirements as a “substantive” change to its rules. This marks the first time the organization has explicitly mandated that acting and writing be performed by humans, reflecting growing concerns about the expanding use of AI tools in the film industry.

In recent months, there have been notable examples of AI technology being used to replace or recreate human work. Actor Val Kilmer, who died in 2025, is set to be recreated with AI technology for a lead role in an upcoming film. Last year, London-based actor and comedian Eline van der Velden said she had created “an entirely fake AI actor” designed to “become a global superstar.”

When the union representing Hollywood writers went on strike two years ago, a key issue was film and TV studios using AI to write scripts. The Academy’s new rule now provides institutional protection for writers and performers.

However, the Academy did not issue a blanket ban on AI use in filmmaking. In the updated rules, it stated that outside of acting and writing, if a filmmaker uses AI tools in their work, such “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,” the organization added. “If questions arise regarding the aforementioned use of generative artificial intelligence, the Academy reserves the right to request more information about the nature of the use and human authorship.”

The rule change comes as Hollywood studios, actors, and authors are pursuing copyright infringement lawsuits against several AI companies, alleging that their training data violates the rights of human creators. The foundation of all AI tools — large language models (LLMs) — is built on text, images, and video created by humans over decades.

Notably, while the Academy has restricted AI in acting and writing, it has not rejected technology’s role in filmmaking more broadly. Computer-generated imagery (CGI) has been widely used in film production since the 1990s. CGI is generally considered a human-driven, manually crafted process, whereas AI tools are typically designed to automate the work entirely through simple prompts — a key distinction between the two approaches.

Source: BBC News, Reuters, Variety