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The Oscars just banned AI from winning acting and writing awards
- 0x3f 5mo agoObviously 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 5mo agoThe 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.
- npinsker 5mo agoI’m downvoting because it’s an unusual (and probably false) claim made with no evidence — particularly your clause after “as” needs a more substantive defense. Can you convince me a bit that you speak for the younger generation?
- userbinator 5mo agoLook at the popularity of all the AI satire/parody videos and memes on YouTube. I've seen a lot of the younger generation who get the majority of their entertainment from the former and pay very little attention to traditional celebrities and the like.
- AlexeyBelov 5mo agoThis user is a troll. Don't bother.
- NicuCalcea 5mo agoYou can't definitively tell if athletes are doping, or students are cheating, it should then be allowed.
- 0x3f 5mo agoIt'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 5mo agoI 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 5mo agoYou 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).
- NicuCalcea 5mo agoHow do you know that it's easier? How do you prove athletes who have not been caught doping were in fact not doping?
- frollogaston 5mo agoIt 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 5mo agoCan 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?
- chungusamongus 5mo ago[dead]
- frollogaston 5mo agoIf there's some admission or evidence internally that they used AI.
- 0x3f 5mo agoBut in order for that to be required, it couldn't be 'blatant'. Unless you mean the admission itself is 'blatant'? Then, I suppose so, although the normal interpretation of that would be from the content itself.
- happytoexplain 5mo agoI 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 5mo agoHow 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 5mo agoIt 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 5mo agoThere is absolutely no fallacy in the statement you're responding to. Laws are meaningless if they cannot be consistently enforced.
- AndrewDucker 5mo agoActually, laws can be really effective even if they are only enforced intermittently.
- sebastiennight 5mo agoI 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 5mo agoI 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?
- sebastiennight 5mo ago> 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 It might be "good enough" that you can't see the difference, which is not equivalent to "people want it". Maybe if people knew that "it"'s not the real thing, they'd assign lower value to "it". Our startup works in video editing. It's not that difficult to foresee that you might be a true fan of [insert your favorite podcaster or content creator], and maybe some AI models would enable $podcaster to duplicate themselves "perfectly", but as a true fan you'd still feel betrayed to learn you just listened to 2 hours of slop that $podcaster was not involved in. "Ha! You say you're vegan but I just tricked you into eating meat-disguised-as-veggies" isn't the most convincing gotcha.
- MrMember 5mo agoThe Oscars are 100% vibes based. It was only very recently made a requirement that the judges actually watch the movies that are nominated.
- therealpygon 5mo agoI’d say there is a difference between awarding an Oscar to an AI actor, and a production receiving an Oscar that for a work that includes an AI actor. I also see no reason that AI specific categories shouldn’t be offered. Just because a person wasn’t holding a camera or a person wasn’t in front of it doesn’t mean it lacks artistry. A one shot prompt can only get an estimation of what you asked for, no matter how descriptive you are. To get what you actually intended, what you imagined, the process looks quite a lot more like smarter versions of.the traditional workflows for digital effects. (Remove a background, add this thing, paint out that thing, etc.)
- 0x3f 5mo ago> A one shot prompt can only get an estimation of what you asked for, no matter how descriptive you are. Isn't that true of all creative outputs, even of 'legacy' provenance?
- spankibalt 5mo agoObvious decision for any institution with at least a modicum of artistic self-respect.
- jmp1062 5mo agoagreed, 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 5mo agoThey already have categories for animation and post visual effects. They just don't necessarily show those awards during the broadcast
- jedimastert 5mo agoI 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_ 5mo agoWhy should motion capture be banned from those awards?
- chuckadams 5mo agoI don't know, but Andy Serkis was robbed of a Best Supporting Actor nomination because Gollum was regarded as "just a CG Character".
- guitarlimeo 5mo agoHalf 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 5mo agoEvery 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.
- guitarlimeo 5mo agoI don't disagree, but facial expressions is like 50% of acting if not more. That's why I said "Half of Andy Serkis' job portraying Gollum was done by animators"
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- hottrends 5mo ago[flagged]
- jedberg 5mo agoGiven 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 5mo agoHah, 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 5mo agoI literally said: "although there is still some unresolved issues around how much AI" Which is really the crux of the issue.
- SilverElfin 5mo agoI would expect that ruling to be overturned at some point. AI is going to be how people work. And saying it can the copyrighted is going to look increasingly absurd, like saying anything produced with Adobe tools can’t be copyrighted.
- jedberg 5mo agoI actually agree with you. Between lobbying from the AI companies, artists when they realize it's a tool they can use to enhance their own work, and probably the movie makers themselves when the realize how much their own people want to use it, it will either be overturned or the laws will be much clearer.
- Papazsazsa 5mo agoGood. 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 5mo ago[flagged]
- karmakurtisaani 5mo agoLet's not start comments with "Shhh" on HN, ok? Leave it for reddit.
- _alternator_ 5mo agoAnd what is falling in love with an actor? Not jerking off?
- Papazsazsa 5mo agoIt's certainly a lot less messy!
- _alternator_ 5mo agoMy point is that falling in love with an actor is (usually) falling in love with an idea or image, not an actual person, and in that way it's not that much different than jacking off.
- Rekindle8090 5mo ago[dead]
- ekjhgkejhgk 5mo agoRemember when they tried to ban computers from winning best special effects? Tron, famously.
- maplethorpe 5mo agoI found some more details about this, for anyone interested. It looks like critics of Tron's visual effects mistakenly thought the computer was generating it all for them, with little human input, when it was actually quite a laborious process. "Tron’s offices were trailers in the Disney parking lot, recalls Chris Wedge, then an animator for MAGI, who worked on Tron’s light cycle sequences. “[That’s] because the Disney animation department didn’t believe that this was animation,” he says. “They thought it was computers just making effects. They just didn’t understand anything about it.”" "Tron’s distinctive glowing circuitry was achieved through a technique called backlight animation, which involves making a negative of each frame and hand-painting the glowing areas. There were 75,000 frames to do; more than half a million pieces of artwork." "Star Wars and Alien both feature 3D wireframe graphics projected on screens. Only a few companies could produce such images, each of which had their own room-sized computer and their own custom-built software. The process was still cumbersome. “We had to figure out how to position and render objects 24 times to make one second of perceived movement on the screen,” says Bill Kroyer, Tron’s head of computer animation. Tron’s animators had to map out the CGI scenes on graph paper, then calculate the coordinates and angles for each element in each frame." https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/jul/05/tron-steven-lisberger-interview https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/jul/05/tron-steven-lis...
- ekjhgkejhgk 5mo ago> It looks like critics of Tron's visual effects mistakenly thought the computer was generating it all for them, with little human input, I no longer remember the details but I certainly didn't get the impression that "human input" vs "no human input" was the actualy criterion. And this line to me is meaningless unless we have specific definitions of what the Christ Wedge meant by "animation" and "just effects" > “[That’s] because the Disney animation department didn’t believe that this was animation,” he says. “They thought it was computers just making effects. They just didn’t understand anything about it.”"
- andsoitis 5mo agoSomeone should tell Valerie Cherish.
- SilverElfin 5mo agoThe Oscars and Hollywood are already quite irrelevant. Looking down on AI and its potential to produce better entertainment is just a sign that they’re scared of its potential.
- 627467 5mo ago> banned ai from winning acting Aren't most cgi acting already unable to be nominated for acting award - even when theres much more deliberate human involvement in the cgi acting? Or maybe they could have been nomination but never was? I see no ambiguity here: if there's no actor that performed anything for the genAI result there's no actor to be nominated. Does this need clarification? > banned ai from winning writing awards I'm going to be looking into how this is enforced/investigated. Again: a human must claim they wrote the script.
- dkuntz2 5mo agoI don't think they banned it, they just reiterated their existing rules that only real humans can receive awards.
- ryanshrott 5mo ago[dead]
- seanmcdirmid 5mo agoThis reminds me of when Tron was disqualified from getting an Oscar for visual effects because the production team “cheated” with computer graphics.