From time to time in the past few years, major, globally recognized red carpet events in the creative sphere have issued policies on AI and its eligibility for entry into their sanctum sanctorum. Most notable among them was the Grammys. Until now. The Motion Picture Academy of America has updated the rules governing eligibility for the Oscars.
ALLi News Editor Dan Holloway
Specifically, the new rules state that Oscar-nominated actors must be human and that films must be human-authored to be in contention. Of course, there's history here that goes way beyond very recent developments in the creation of AI actors.
Background from the Strikes
The actors and writers strike that brought Hollywood to a halt over (among a couple of other things) the issue of AI in film, specifically AI replacements of actors and the use of AI in writers' rooms. The result was a set of limits on the use of AI in both settings. All that of course was before the use of large image/language models really took off so steeply. But now the Academy has come down really firmly on the side of human creativity. AI renditions of actors, real or wholly created, cannot secure an Oscar nod. Nor can scripts written with AI. AI outside of those roles, however, will not prevent eligibility.
Canadian Publishing Survey
That leads into the other AI story this week, which is a very interesting BISG (Book Industry Study Group) survey on the use of AI in publishing. The survey spotlights Canada and covers 2025. What interested me most about the findings is just how little there was that was surprising. Just under half of respondents (45.8 percent) and their organizations (48 percent) but overwhelmingly for administrative tasks, not “creative” ones.
And the fears, suspicions, and concerns were familiar too: misuse of copyrighted material (86.4 percent), hallucination (84.3 percent), and misinformation (79.2 percent). The one big addition to fears is the 81.1 percent who were concerned about the sheer number of AI-generated books in the marketplace—a figure from before the recent headlines about the extra million titles entering the system last year. My wonder is whether this will drive a defensiveness among traditional publishers that sees an increase in overall gatekeeping that has knock-on effects in the indie world.
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