{"id":141,"date":"2026-04-08T04:32:34","date_gmt":"2026-04-08T04:32:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/141\/"},"modified":"2026-04-08T04:32:34","modified_gmt":"2026-04-08T04:32:34","slug":"should-ai-assisted-shows-be-eligible-for-emmys","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/141\/","title":{"rendered":"Should AI-Assisted Shows Be Eligible for Emmys?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tDuring the recently concluded Oscars season, stars didn\u2019t always want to speak about politics. But at awards<\/a> show after awards show they were eager to share their thoughts on another hot topic: AI<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tNegative thoughts, mostly.<\/p>\n

\n\tAs\u00a0One Battle After Another\u00a0actress Shayna McHale colorfully put it at the Writers Guild Awards, \u201cLadies, if you know a tech bro trying to replace writers with AI, just say, \u2018this pussy don\u2019t pop for you,’\u201d invoking her character Junglepussy\u2019s memorable line from the film.<\/p>\n

\n\tWith Emmys<\/a> season looming<\/a>, the TV Academy wants to pave a smoother path. Hoping to clarify what will be in and out of bounds for this year\u2019s nominees, the group in January added a statement to the rules for the upcoming season: The Academy, it said, reserves the \u201cright to inquire about the use of AI in submissions.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBut the organization undercut that vigilance with another line \u2014\u00a0 \u201cThe core of our recognition remains centered on human storytelling, regardless of the tools used to bring it to life.\u201d And so, far from clearing up confusion, the provisions have sparked criticism from numerous TV writers and producers, including Academy members, who think the guidelines leave far too much room for AI to have a meaningful role on writing, acting and other creative disciplines in Emmy nominees.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIf they\u2019re going to make a statement about AI, which I think they should, it should be specific, and it should have some consequences,\u201d says Stan Brooks, an Emmy-winning producer (Broken Trail) who votes on the Emmys. \u201cThe police can\u2019t say, \u2018Hey, I\u2019d like to inquire about whether or not you robbed that bank.\u2019 That\u2019s not how it works,\u201d added the Academy member, who believes an AI-aided script or performance should receive an automatic disqualification in writing and acting categories.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe friction comes as the technology continues to worry, on both spiritual and labor grounds, workers across Hollywood. Over the weekend the Writers Guild reached a tentative agreement<\/a> with the studios that looks likely to maintain full consent privileges for writers, which means AI will likely not make it into the scripts of many but far from all Emmys contenders. Plenty of other realms remain unrestricted.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe controversy raises questions that go to the heart not just of awards but the very nature of art: Is it just achieved by human autonomy or can it also be achieved via a human being deploying an autonomous tool? And if so, can that art be judged by the same standards as art created solely by a human?<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Emmys, at least, seems to be holding the door open for AI. TV Academy CEO Maury McIntyre tells The Hollywood Reporter that the organization wants to be \u201cnon-committal\u201d in any kind of prohibition on AI use. \u201cWe\u2019re now realizing the power of AI as a fantastic tool. It can also be used to completely transform things,\u201d he says, noting that the tech-friendly guidelines came out of discussions with the Academy\u2019s AI task force, led by the head of AI studio FireBringer Media Group, Eric Shamlin, who currently sits on the board of governors for the Emmys.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Academy has also taken a proactive approach to AI with its membership, hosting multiple AI summits, including one last month, on how members might use the technology, and McIntyre in his role as Academy leader suggests that he believes a showrunner assisted by AI could win an Emmy. To actually be banned from an Emmy a production would have had to take a lot of control out of human hands \u2014 an extreme case like if \u201csomeone simply gave AI a prompt and said, \u2018create an opening montage,\u2019 and that was what got used\u201d McIntyre says, or if \u201csomebody submitted the first AI rom-com script and it was entirely written by AI.\u201d<\/p>\n

That leaves a wide swath of seemingly eligible contenders featuring meaningful AI contributions. And some TV creatives are frustrated that the rules fail to ban such instances.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019d be nice to define a clear line that people could agree on,\u201d says veteran TV and film scribe Mark Heyman. \u201cI think people would probably be okay saying scripts can\u2019t be written by AI, full stop. Whether there will be people skirting that rule and not getting caught, it still would be meaningful to create the standard.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHeyman says he feels the TV Academy should be rising to the moment. \u201cSomething like the Emmys, which is designed to reward excellence in these fields \u2014 who better to define what counts as human creativity?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tVictor Levin, who has written on past Emmy winners like Mad Men and Mad About You, says the Academy should begin requiring much more specific disclosures and then making decisions based on that. \u201cTo me, it\u2019s like a food label. You have a right to know what you\u2019re putting in your body, and you have a right to know what you\u2019re putting in your brain. The more clarity there is, as far as I\u2019m concerned, the better,\u201d says Levin, who these days adds a \u201cwritten by a human being\u201d tag to his work.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd Savannah College of Art & Design professor Chris Auer \u2014 who wrote for As the World Turns, The Cosby Show and Big Brother Jake and is now training the next generation of (human) writers \u2014 like Levin supports\u00a0the idea of the Academy making inquiries about AI usage but indicates the current framework leaves things too open to the recognition of AI-generated content, which he said they couldn\u2019t vote for.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe skeptics look to a model of sorts from the Recording Academy, which in 2023 made additions to the Grammys rules stating that, while work with \u201celements of AI material\u201d is eligible, \u201cthe human authorship component of the work submitted must be meaningful and more than de minimis.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tOn the other hand, the Emmys\u2019 approach to AI seems more in line with that of the Film Academy, which issued a similarly open-ended addition to its rules for the Oscars roughly a year ago, saying that \u201cGenerative Artificial Intelligence and other digital tools used in the making of the film \u2026 neither help nor harm the chances of achieving a nomination.\u201d As with the Oscars, it\u2019s worth noting that a number of Emmy contending-companies have a strong Silicon Valley background, including Netflix, Apple and Amazon.<\/p>\n

\n\tMcIntyre acknowledges more stringent regulations could be possible for the TV Academy in the future, pointing to how the group reviews its rules every year. \u201cIf something comes up in the industry that we think we need to respond to, then we\u2019ll do that,\u201d he said, but added, \u201cI don\u2019t see us making any drastic changes at this point.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThere has already been a test case: the 2023 Marvel series Secret Invasion, which drew backlash for its AI-centric opening sequence. Critics said it relied too heavily on the tech, but McIntyre demurs, saying \u201cwhen you went and asked the designers, it\u2019s like, \u2018No, no, this was all driven by a human.\u2019 They were just using AI, and they were giving it prompts, and then they were seeing what they were getting, and then they were deciding what they were going to use. They put together the sequence,\u201d he adds, which would seemingly makes it eligible. <\/p>\n

\n\tBut this distinction lands awkwardly for some critics, who ask if it\u2019s fair to put such concoctions in with the traditional nominees. \u201cA human being assisted by Claude is up against the human being who wasn\u2019t assisted by Claude,\u201d says Heyman. \u201cWho are you rewarding?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOne of the main fears around widespread use of AI for many entertainment industry workers is the threat of job losses. \u00a0Visual effects and postproduction work are seen as most vulnerable to the technology, with one study in early 2024 of nearly 300 leaders across the industry estimating that<\/a> more than 200,000 positions will be eliminated over the next three years.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a meta turn, that issue will rear itself this Emmys season with the candidacy of HBO\u2019s The Comeback<\/a>, in which Lisa Kudrow\u2019s Valerie Cherish character stars in a hit sitcom titled How\u2019s That? \u00a0whose figurehead showrunners are unceremoniously edged out in favor of AI. Voters will thus be asked to hand the human writers of the show nominations in a manner that contradicts of the very thesis of the show (or at least the show within a show).<\/p>\n

\n\tPast Emmys efforts to define contenders on tech grounds haven\u2019t always gone well. Brooks recalls that when he was a TV Academy governor in the early \u201990s, Simpsons executive producer James L. Brooks (no relation) appealed to have the series moved from the animation category to the comedy series category, pointing out that the writers working on The Simpsons came from a sitcom background. Numerous governors, Stan Brooks says, felt that was a \u201cslippery slope\u201d that would \u201cend up with an actress competing against Marge Simpson.\u201d The appeal was voted down.<\/p>\n

\n\tOne solution now, as with animation, could be creating separate categories for AI content. But defining the boundaries could be slippery; how to account, for instance, for all the writers using ChatGPT in the early stages of script creation? (\u201cI don\u2019t know how you would award something that\u2019s been assisted to some degree by AI,\u201d Daily Show alum and Have I Got News for You host Roy Wood Jr. tells THR.)<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd mixing AI categories in with non-AI ones could, some critics feel, make for an unfair comparison. \u201cAt least at this point it\u2019s apples and oranges,\u201d says Levin. \u201cAI is making stuff by smashing what\u2019s out there into molecules and then rearranging it according to probabilities. That\u2019s not the same thing as walking through your backyard at three o\u2019clock in the morning trying to think of an idea.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOne of this year\u2019s likely big contenders, Bill Lawrence<\/a> and Matt Tarses\u2019 Rooster, on HBO, is a prime example of that backyard phenomenon: a distinctly Lawrence-ian blend of warmth and cutting comedy that couldn\u2019t really be coaxed out of a machine. \u201cI take great pride in\u2026human storytelling by human writers\u201d Lawrence tells THR, who says he\u2019ll continue to pursue that \u201cas long as my career goes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIf AI shows do get created, some Academy members feel they should be part of a separate show entirely, like the Creative Arts Emmys, or perhaps even come from another organization entirely. \u201cI don\u2019t think we want to be having AI-created material competing against human-created material,\u201d says Brooks. <\/p>\n

\n\tHe adds that a TV Academy rule should make clear what the group stands for. \u201cI think it has to state that we are a human creative organization,\u201d he adds \u201cand we will continue to recognize human contributions, not AI. Who are they worried about offending, the computer?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"During the recently concluded Oscars season, stars didn\u2019t always want to speak about politics. But at awards show…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":142,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[24,262,25,263,264,265,266,267,268],"class_list":{"0":"post-141","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ai","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-ai-digital-issue","10":"tag-artificial-intelligence","11":"tag-awards","12":"tag-bill-lawrence","13":"tag-emmys","14":"tag-television","15":"tag-television-academy","16":"tag-the-comeback"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}