The Motion Picture Sound Editors said Thursday that it will no longer consider projects in which Generative AI is used to create elements for the final soundtrack for the group’s annual Golden Reel Awards.
The move comes the same day as members of animation, actor and writers guilds gathered at France’s Annecy Animation Film Festival to protest the use of the growing technology, which has many in the creative industries wary about what AI means for their creativity, skills and livelihoods.
The MPSE‘s new rules surrounding GenAI will be added to the guidelines for the next Golden Reels, the annual awards ceremony that honors outstanding achievement in sound editing, sound design, music editing and Foley artistry in film, television and gaming.
“We support and prize technological advances that assist artists in their creations,” the MPSE said in a press release today announcing the move. “However, standards for the legal and ethical use of Generative A.I. have yet to be established and are far from being accepted broadly. What we choose to promote as award-worthy points to how much we value the human endeavor of artistic creation.”
The MPSE added that its board of directors and A.I. committee are “poised to evolve our stance on this issue” and pledged to “remain open to what the technological future may bring in support of the humans working in the craft of sound editorial.”
“It is an enormous question to ask: how much of our humanity are we willing to give away to technology, especially in the arts?” MPSE president David Barber said. “The time to ponder that question, set up boundaries, and guide how A.I. is assimilated into our workflow and lives was yesterday. The dam of A.I. has broken, and the waters are upon us. Choosing what we embrace as award-worthy filmmaking is a way of diverting those waters while we grapple with this exponential change. As A.I. technology infiltrates and permeates our industry, rules and accepted practices for its use need to emerge that keep artists at the forefront.”
