Academy tightens AI rules, expands international film eligibility for Oscars

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences moved to redraw some of the Oscars’ most sensitive rules, tightening AI protections for writers and actors while broadening the path for international films that want a place on the ballot. The changes, released Friday, May 1, for the 99th Oscars in 2027, reflect an effort to keep pace with technology and a film business that now moves across borders as easily as it does across platforms.

The new writing rule is blunt: screenplays must be human-authored to qualify for writing Oscars. The Academy did not ban AI outright, but it said it will judge whether a human was at the heart of the creative authorship and reserves the right to ask filmmakers for more information about how AI was used and how much of the work came from human hands. On the acting side, only performances “demonstrably performed by humans with their consent” will be eligible, a line meant to protect actors as synthetic performance tools become more capable.

Academy president Lynette Howell Taylor said humans must remain at the center of the creative process. CEO Bill Kramer framed the overhaul as a response to a more global industry, saying the Academy has to rethink how it welcomes international films into Oscar consideration. The Academy describes itself as a global membership of more than 11,000 film artists and leaders, and the rule changes suggest it wants its awards system to match that footprint more closely.

The biggest shift for international feature films is the widening of eligibility beyond the traditional one-film-per-country submission model. Films can still enter through national selection, but they can now also qualify by winning top prizes at Berlin, Busan, Cannes, the Sundance Film Festival’s World Cinema Grand Jury Prize, Toronto or Venice. The award will also be credited to the director on behalf of the country or region, rather than to the country itself. That change could matter as much symbolically as procedurally, giving the honor a more individual face while still tying it to national or regional identity.

The international feature rules have long drawn criticism for forcing each country or region to choose just one film, a system that often left acclaimed titles outside the race when local selection committees went another way. The new structure does not remove the country submission process, but it does open a second route for films that have already broken through on the festival circuit, redistributing prestige a bit more broadly across the global awards map.

The acting changes are smaller on paper but potentially significant in practice. Actors may now receive multiple nominations in the same category if both performances land among the top five vote-getters, ending the old system in which only the higher-voted performance could survive. The Academy had tightened the rule after Barry Fitzgerald’s unusual 1945 double nomination for the same role, a reminder that eligibility rules often harden in response to one memorable edge case.