The Oscars just banned AI from winning acting and writing awards

https://gizmodo.com/the-oscars-just-banned-ai-from-winning-acting-and-writing-awards-2000753740

54•ZeidJ•2h ago

Comments

0x3f•1h ago

Obviously just performative signalling that doesn't really do much. You can't definitively tell if AI was used, so the rule can never realistically be enforced.

Then again, the Oscars are surely almost entirely vibes based anyway. So it's hardly some internally consistent system of merit in the first place.

userbinator•1h ago

The younger generation also increasingly pays less attention to traditional mainstream entertainment and media, as now they can create more of it with AI.

Edit: funny to see the anti-AI crowd showing up again, how predictable... you can downvote but you can't stop the truth! Legacy entertainment is dying, and will soon become irrelevant.

NicuCalcea•1h ago

You can't definitively tell if athletes are doping, or students are cheating, it should then be allowed.

0x3f•41m ago

It's much easier to tell if athletes are doping than to 'detect' AI in text that's already Oscar-for-writing level good. I would suggest the latter is quite literally impossible.

edmundsauto•4m ago

I have always heard that dopers are consistently ahead of testing regimes. I don’t think it is easier to tell than AI, which always seems pretty obvious to me.

0x3f•1m ago

You have to consider that any AI content worthy of the Oscar shortlist is going to be very high-quality, and likely intensely hand/human-tweaked in the first place. It's not from the general population of all AI content out there.

> I have always heard that dopers are consistently ahead of testing regimes

I don't know about that, even the very biggest names with the most funding quite often get dinged for it. I suppose I'm not really saying that the detection rate for doping is high, though, just that it's much higher than AI detection in high-quality content (which I would suggest is approximately zero).

frollogaston•1h ago

It prevents anyone from blatantly using AI. If they want to use it anyway and risk getting found out, sure. That's still a big difference.

0x3f•38m ago

Can you explain how an Oscar-worthy piece of writing would somehow be able to contain blatant AI-generated content? How would it have already passed the good-enough-for-an-Oscar filter?

happytoexplain•47m ago

I wish we could stop the slide of the term "performative" into meaninglessness.

Just because something is hard or even impossible to enforce, doesn't mean you don't state that it is not allowed and that there are consequences for being caught. That's a common fallacy that overly engineering-minded people fall into.

We're humans. We care about things. There is nothing strange about me asking you not to do something that I can't stop you from doing.

0x3f•39m ago

How are there consequences for being caught if it's impossible to detect?

Moreover, why stop here? There are many great rules that are impossible to enforce. Why not a rule that the author isn't allowed to have any racist thoughts when writing the material?

We can't read minds, but it sure is a nice thing to care about, don't you think?

edmundsauto•5m ago

It doesn’t always have to have consequences when it’s a curated access club like the Oscars. It’s ok to have cultural norms that aren’t enforced by consequences, at the very least some of the ethical participants will follow them. I know that I try to follow the spirit of the clubs I participate in, and if they don’t have these types of statements often I just don’t know what the community thinks is ok.

It breaks down when assholes join, or the overly self-interested. This mindset permeates America today, but there are still many collective organizations that don’t need punitive measures. These are less common but when you find them, it’s often a positive signal.

chungusamongus•38m ago

There is absolutely no fallacy in the statement you're responding to. Laws are meaningless if they cannot be consistently enforced.

AndrewDucker•26m ago

Actually, laws can be really effective even if they are only enforced intermittently.

0x3f•16m ago

I'm not sure how true this is.

If you consider low-stakes crimes, typically to get to a steady state of effectiveness you need at least some sort of bootstrapped period of ubiquitous enforcement. If that's impossible then I'm not sure you ever get to effectiveness.

If we're talking high-stakes, death-penalty-lottery-if-you-break-the-rules type stuff, then I think actually detection rate (i.e. consistent enforcement) is the biggest predictor of reduced rates, not severity of punishment.

happytoexplain•1m ago

Sure, but even giving 100% of the benefit of the doubt you're raising, it still doesn't follow that it is purely "performative" to formally establish a rule just because it may soon become impossible to identify rule-breakers without whistle-blowers or intel.

happytoexplain•24m ago

That just doesn't follow.

sebastiennight•30m ago

I guess the Best Visual Effects category is going to be tough to judge, but don't you think it might be quite hard to win the Best Actress Academy Award if your AI-generated heroine can't come get the trophy?

Also, "truth" is a thing that exists, and just because you can't always tell if somebody cheated the rules or not, does not mean the rules are "performative signalling".

0x3f•4m ago

I don't think AI-generated 'avatars' are anywhere close to being Oscar-worthy as things stand, so it seems kind of a moot point (hence the 'signalling' thing).

If they ever get that good, I would just say you can't really fight the market. If AI content is good enough that people want it, then the Oscars just get left behind after a while. But that's fine, and up to them.

> Also, "truth" is a thing that exists, and just because you can't always tell if somebody cheated the rules or not, does not mean the rules are "performative signalling".

I don't really understand. If you can't hope to discover the truth, in what way is it not performative or signalling?

jedimastert•1h ago

I would be surprised if it weren't already de facto banned, like how motion capture performances are essentially banned from Best Actor/Actress awards

_aavaa_•1h ago

Why should motion capture be banned from those awards?

chuckadams•1h ago

I don't know, but Andy Serkis was robbed of a Best Supporting Actor nomination because Gollum was regarded as "just a CG Character".

guitarlimeo•1h ago

Half of Andy Serkis' job portraying Gollum was done by animators, even though Serkis provided the basic facial expressions.

I would've given him the best voice acting award though.

chuckadams•54m ago

Every last motion Gollum makes was Serkis doing it, including when he's jumping up on rocks and climbing down head-first. The animators certainly deserve credit for the facial expressions and the rest of the work of the digital costume, but he physically acted the part.

jedimastert•54m ago

I didn't say should, I said are.

The rationale (which, again, I'm not arguing for or against) is that mocap performances are not strictly speaking totally the actors, because mocap has to be cleaned and can be (and very often is) edited and tweaked after the fact by animators. Not to mention there are often required liberties taken because a model cannot line up one to one with an actor anatomically.

In a sense, mocap performances are done by a team of animators where one animator puppeted a model in real time.

spankibalt•1h ago

Obvious decision for any institution with at least a modicum of artistic self-respect.

jmp1062•45m ago

agreed, as AI is more widely adopted in cinematography i assume they will start adding categories specifically for it... hate the idea of them ever competing directly against actual humans performing

dylan604•34m ago

They already have categories for animation and post visual effects. They just don't necessarily show those awards during the broadcast

jedberg•46m ago

Given the latest court ruling in March that AI works can't be copyrighted, this makes a lot of sense. The movie itself can't be copyrighted if it uses AI (although there is still some unresolved issues around how much AI).

chungusamongus•40m ago

Hah, no. Just because AI was employed in the production to some extent doesn't mean it can't be copyrighted. It is not so black and white. You are not describing the situation accurately.

jedberg•22m ago

I literally said: "although there is still some unresolved issues around how much AI"

Which is really the crux of the issue.

Papazsazsa•42m ago

Good. The intangibles of art are undeniable.

- emotional connection

- aesthetics

- zeitgeist

- lived experience

- artist journey

You're free to fall in love with your sexbot, but it's still just jerking off.

ejje•35m ago

Shhh you’re going to upset a lot of people on here who are depressed and want others to feel like them!

karmakurtisaani•5m ago

Let's not start comments with "Shhh" on HN, ok? Leave it for reddit.

_alternator_•31m ago

And what is falling in love with an actor? Not jerking off?

ekjhgkejhgk•36m ago

Remember when they tried to ban computers from winning best special effects? Tron, famously.

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