Culture 3 min read By Lauren Baxter
Oscars Will Always Reward Human Excellence in AI Era, Academy Says
Academy leaders tell Variety in Tokyo that human-driven filmmaking will keep being honored as AI spreads, and that the international feature rules may still be adjusted during the first year of a new festival-based qualification route.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will continue to honor human-driven work as artificial intelligence spreads through filmmaking, Academy president Lynette Howell Taylor told Variety in Tokyo. Her message was that the Oscars will "always" recognize human excellence, even as new tools reshape how movies are made.
Howell Taylor spoke alongside Academy CEO Bill Kramer and other members of the organization's leadership. The group also said it expects to keep refining the rules for the International Feature category during the first year of a new route that allows film festivals to qualify films. The leaders left the door open to changes to those rules as the new system takes shape.
The comments come as the film industry debates how generative AI should be used in production and how awards bodies should treat work that involves it. By framing the Academy's position around human achievement, the leadership signaled that the awards are not planning to abandon their focus on creative people, even as the technology evolves. The International Feature category, which has its own qualification process, is where the festival route introduces the most immediate procedural change.
The festival-based pathway is new, and the Academy's stated approach is to watch how it works in practice before committing to lasting rule changes. That cautious posture suggests the category's requirements could shift again after the first cycle under the new system, though the leaders did not specify particular revisions in the remarks reported.
Separately, the wider entertainment world was marked this week by remembrance and new projects. Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins, who died in 2022 at age 50 just before a show in Bogotá, Colombia, was recalled by bandmate Dave Grohl in an interview on Jimmy Kimmel Live!. Grohl said Hawkins joined the band in 1997 after touring with Alanis Morissette, and described their friendship as immediate. He said Morissette had suggested Hawkins as a fit for the Foos. Hawkins remained with the band for eight albums, and Foo Fighters have since released two more, 2023's But Here We Are and 2026's Your Favorite Toy. Ilan Rubin became the band's drummer after Josh Freese's departure in May 2025.
In the animation market, the Deadline report that London-based SC Films International has struck a number of international deals for the animated family-adventure Cloud Girl, previously titled Girl in the Clouds. The feature, from French writer-director Philippe Riche, was inspired by Romain Puértolas' 2015 novel The Little Girl Who Swallowed a Cloud as Big as the Eiffel Tower and screened as an Annecy title.
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