During the recently concluded Oscars season, stars didn’t always want to talk politics. But at the awards show after the awards show, they were keen to share their thoughts on another hot topic: artificial intelligence.
Mostly negative thoughts.
like Battle after battle “Ladies, if you know a tech bro who’s trying to replace writers with AI, just say, ‘That pussy don’t like you,’” actress Shaina McHale colorfully said at the Writers Guild Awards, invoking her character Junglepussy’s memorable line from the movie.
As Emmy season approaches, the Television Academy wants to pave a smoother path. Hoping to clarify what will be in and out of bounds for this year’s nominees, the group in January added a statement to the rules for the upcoming season: The academy, it said, reserves the “right to inquire about the use of artificial intelligence in submissions.”
But the organization undermined this vigilance with another statement – “The core of our appreciation remains centered around telling human stories, regardless of the tools used to bring them to life.” Thus, far from clearing up confusion, the rulings have drawn criticism from many television writers and producers, including Academy members, who believe the guidelines leave too much room for artificial intelligence to have a useful role in writing, acting and other creative disciplines in Emmy nominees.
“If they’re going to make a statement about artificial intelligence, which I think they should do, it has to be specific, and it has to have some consequences,” says Emmy Award-winning producer Stan Brooks.Broken trail) who votes on the Emmys. “The police can’t say: ‘Hey, I’d like to inquire whether or not you robbed that bank.'” “That’s not the way it works,” added the academy member, who believes an AI-powered script or performance should get an automatic disqualification in the writing and acting categories.
This friction comes as technology continues to unsettle workers across Hollywood, both for spiritual and labor reasons. Over the weekend, the Writers Guild reached a tentative agreement with studios that seems likely to maintain full writers’ approval privileges, meaning AI will likely not make it into the scripts of many Emmy contenders but far from all of them. Lots of other worlds remain untrammeled.
This debate raises questions not only about awards, but about the nature of art itself: is it achieved through human autonomy alone or can it also be achieved through a human using an autonomous tool? If so, can this art be judged by the same standards as art created by man alone?
The Emmy Awards, at least, seem to be throwing the door open to artificial intelligence. says Television Academy CEO Maury McIntyre Hollywood Reporter The organization wants to be “non-committal” to any kind of ban on the use of artificial intelligence. “We now realize the power of AI as an incredible tool. It can also be used to completely transform things,” he says, noting that the appropriate guidelines for the technology came from discussions with the Academy’s AI Task Force, led by FireBringer Media Group AI studio head Eric Chamlin, who currently serves as a member of the Emmys’ Board of Governors.
The Academy has also taken a proactive approach to AI through its members, hosting several AI summits, including one last month, on how members use the technology, and McIntyre notes in his role as the Academy’s leader that he believes an AI-assisted showrunner could win an Emmy. For a production to actually be denied an Emmy, it would have had to take a lot of control out of human hands — an extreme case like “if someone simply gave the AI a prompt and said, ‘Create an opening montage,’ and that was what was used,” McIntyre says, or if “someone submitted the first AI-powered rom-com script that was written entirely by the AI.”
This leaves a wide pool of qualified contenders making meaningful contributions to the field of AI. Some TV creators are frustrated that the rules fail to prohibit such instances.
“It would be good to set a clear line that people can agree on,” says veteran TV and film writer Mark Heyman. “I think people will probably be okay with saying texts can’t be written by AI, period. Whether there are people who circumvent this rule and don’t get caught, it’s still useful to create a standard.”
Heyman says he feels the Television Academy should rise to this moment. “Something like the Emmys, which are designed to reward excellence in these fields, who better to define what counts as human creativity?”
Victor Levin, who has written about previous Emmy winners such as mad men and Crazy about youHe says the academy should start requiring more specific disclosures and then make decisions based on that. “For me, it’s like a food stamp,” says Levin, who these days adds a “human-written” tag to his work. “You have a right to know what you’re putting in your body, and you have a right to know what you’re putting in your brain. The more clarity, to me, the better.” These days, Levin adds a “human-written” tag to his work.
and Savannah College of Art and Design professor Chris Auer — who has written for As the world turns, The Cosby Show and Big brother Jake He is now training the next generation of (human) writers – like Levin, he supports the idea of the academy conducting inquiries into the use of AI but points out that the current framework leaves things too open for exposure to AI-generated content, which he said they cannot vote for.
Skeptics look to a model from the Recording Academy, which in 2023 added to its Grammy rules stating that although work using “elements of artificial intelligence material” is eligible, “the element of human authorship in the submitted work must be meaningful and more than minimal.”
On the other hand, the Emmys’ approach to AI seems more in line with that of the Film Academy, which issued a similar open-ended addition to its Oscars rules about a year ago, saying that “generative AI and other digital tools used in the making of a film…neither help nor hurt its chances of achieving a nomination.” As with the Oscars, it’s worth noting that a number of the companies competing for the Emmy have strong Silicon Valley backgrounds, including Netflix, Apple and Amazon.
McIntyre acknowledges the possibility of stricter regulations for the Television Academy in the future, noting how the group reviews its rules every year. “If something happens in the industry that we think we need to respond to, we will,” he said, but added: “I don’t see us making any radical changes at this point.”
There’s already been a test case: the 2023 Marvel series secret invasion, Which sparked backlash over its AI-centric opening sequence. Critics said it relied too heavily on technology, but McIntyre demurs: “When I went and asked the designers, it was like, ‘No, no, this was all human-driven.’ They were just using AI, and they were directing it, and then they were seeing what they were getting, and then they were deciding what they were going to use. “They put the sequence together,” he adds, which apparently qualifies him.
But the distinction seems awkward to some critics, who wonder whether it is fair to make such fabrications with the traditional candidates. “The person who is helped by Claude faces the person who is not helped by Claude,” Heyman says. “Who are you rewarded?”
One of the major concerns about the widespread use of artificial intelligence for many in the industry Entertainment is the threat of job loss. Visual effects and post-production work are seen as most vulnerable to the technology, with an early 2024 study of nearly 300 industry leaders estimating that more than 200,000 jobs will be eliminated over the next three years.
In a major twist, the issue will feature this Emmys season with an HBO nomination Returnwhere Lisa Kudrow’s character Valerie Cherish stars in a hit comedy series titled How is this? whose leading models have been unceremoniously outdone in favor of artificial intelligence. Voters would thus be asked to hand off the show’s nominations to human writers in a way that conflicts with the thesis of the show itself (or at least the show within the show).
Previous Emmys efforts to select contenders for technical reasons have not always gone well. Brooks recalls that when he was director of the Television Academy in the early 1990s, Simpsons executive producer James L. Brooks (not related) moved the series from the anime category to the comedy series category, noting that the writers working on… The Simpsons He came from a sitcom background. Stan Brooks says many judges felt this was a “slippery slope” that would “end up with an actress competing against Marge Simpson.” The appeal was voted down.
One solution now, as with animation, is to create separate categories for AI content. But setting boundaries can be slippery; How do you, for example, account for all writers who use ChatGPT in the early stages of script creation? (“I don’t know how you’d give away something that’s been powered to some extent by AI,” Daily show Alum and Do I have news for you? says host Roy Wood Jr THR.)
Some critics feel that mixing AI categories with non-AI categories can lead to unfair comparison. “At least at this point, it’s apples and oranges,” Levin says. “AI makes things by breaking down what exists into particles and then rearranging them according to possibilities. This is not the same thing as walking in your backyard at three in the morning trying to think of an idea.”
One of this year’s potential top contenders is Bill Lawrence and Matt Tarses. Roosteron HBO, is a prime example of that backyard phenomenon: a distinctly Lawrenceian blend of warmth and incisive comedy that couldn’t be taken out of the machine. “I’m very proud of telling human stories by human writers,” Lawrence says. THRwho says he will continue to pursue this “as long as my career lasts.”
If AI shows are created, some Academy members feel they should be part of a separate show entirely, like the Creative Arts Emmys, or perhaps even belong to another organization entirely. “I don’t think we want to have AI-made materials competing with human-made materials,” Brooks says.
He adds that the Television Academy’s rule should make clear what the group stands for. He adds: “I think it should be mentioned that we are a creative humanitarian organization, and we will continue to recognize human contributions, not artificial intelligence. Who are they to worry about abuse, computers?”
