The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences made it official on Friday: artificial intelligence has no place at the Oscars, and the acting categories are getting their most significant shakeup in decades.
The Academy’s board of governors decreed that the only sorts of performances eligible for acting Oscars are those credited in a film’s legal billing and demonstrably performed by humans with their consent. The move appears to directly address questions raised by the posthumous AI-assisted completion of a performance by the late actor Val Kilmer, who passed away in 2025.
The Academy also made clear that only human-authored screenplays are eligible for writing Oscars, leaving no gray area about where the organization stands on generative AI in the creative process.
On the acting front, a rule that has been in place since the earliest years of the ceremony is being reversed. Actors may now be nominated for multiple performances in the same category.
For decades, if a single performer delivered multiple performances that each received enough votes to finish in the top five, only the higher-tallying performance would advance. That’s no longer the case. Multiple performances can now be nominated, aligning the acting categories with all other categories, in which an individual can receive multiple nominations.
The international feature film category is also seeing major changes. A film can now qualify for consideration by winning the top prize at one of several major international film festivals, Berlin, Busan, Cannes, Sundance, Toronto, or Venice, meaning a single country or region could now land multiple nominations for best international feature.
Previously, only one film per country, selected by a local Academy-approved committee, could be submitted. Additionally, the best international feature Oscar will no longer be awarded to a country or region, but rather to its director on behalf of it, with the director’s name appearing on the Oscar plaque and in the record books.
Several other category-level changes round out the announcement. The number of people eligible to win an Oscar statuette for best casting has been increased from two to three, and the best cinematography category will now produce a shortlist of 20 films. The Governors Awards, the annual ceremony honoring distinguished contributions to film, will also operate under a new requirement: a minimum of three disciplines must be represented among honorees in any given year.
The 99th Oscars are set for Sunday, March 14, 2027. With these new rules now in place, the race to get there just got a lot more interesting.
