The Golden Globes recently updated its timeline and guidelines regarding the use of AI in movies and TV shows and their eligibility for awards. While a step in the right direction, the new guidelines are still much too lax and present a slippery slope for the industry and its acceptance of AI.
Golden Globes allowing AI is a slippery slope for the industry
Recently, the Golden Globes announced a slew of new information about the show, including its date (January 10, 2027), host (a returning Nikki Glazer), and the fact that submissions for the show open on June 1, 2026. Along with that, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association released its guidelines on AI in nominees. According to the guidelines, the use of AI “does not automatically disqualify a work from consideration, provided that human creative direction, artistic judgment, and authorship remain primary throughout the production process.”
All submitted work for the awards will be evaluated based on a number of things, including “the extent to which creative direction, artistic decision-making, and execution originate from credited individuals.” The guideline notes that AI could be used in a production sense, but not “as part of the core creative contributions” to the project.
Award shows are meant to be for celebrating the human element of movies and TV
While it is good to see high-profile awards like the Golden Globes take a stance, their new set of guidelines is significantly more relaxed than some other shows, and not nearly harsh enough to people who may use AI to create projects. On an awards comparison, the Globes are woefully less strict than something like the Oscars, which also recently updated its guidelines for the show to note that acting roles must be “performed by humans with their consent,” and screenplays “must be human-authored.” While the Golden Globes does cover broader categories than the Oscars, even allowing small inclusions of AI could lead us down a worse path.
At its core, these award shows are meant to be celebrations of the industry and the people who create things within them. AI seems, unfortunately, not to be going anywhere, but giving out awards to projects that use the technology feels like celebrating the exclusion of the human element from film and TV, which fundamentally goes against the idea of them in the first place. When Hollywood’s writers went on strike in 2023, one of their biggest demands was safeguards for jobs against AI, so allowing AI’s inclusion for production and help purposes seems to fly in the face of what the people making these projects wanted in the first place.
At the end of the day, opening the Pandora’s box of AI, even a little bit as the Globes are doing, makes it almost impossible to ever really prevent its inclusion in the future. The ultimate pessimistic take would be that it’s only a matter of time before AI as a whole is widely accepted in Hollywood, but the optimist in me hopes that the industry will continue to buck back against it, even when it comes to something like handing out trophies.
