Film festivals now count how much of a movie AI made

The Hong Kong International AI Film Festival (HKAIIFF 2026) opened submissions to filmmakers worldwide in May 2026. The organisers call it the world's first event of international standing devoted to "AI-native" content. Work on the project's logic and technical architecture began in 2022. In December 2024 the organisers' association was registered with the approval of the government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. The city has strategic context: it is both a centre of cultural exchange between China and the world and a hub of technological innovation.

A number as an artistic criterion

The most disputed part of the rules is the quantitative criterion. Submitted films must have more than 51 percent of their content generated by AI. The organisers treat that threshold as a way to tell two modes of work apart: "AI assistance" and "natively AI creation". The festival is trying to build a measurable reference point for judging films made with models. An entire ecosystem has grown around the competition. Alongside the event itself, a film academy (HKAIFA) is to train the next generations of creators, a film market (HKAIFM) is to handle trade in rights to digital content, and a global submissions centre will take entries online. The organisers also promise a channel of cooperation with a Chinese export base for AI films. It is meant to shorten the time and lower the cost of preparing Chinese cultural content for foreign audiences, mainly by simplifying translation and production. The attendance figures are already measurable: in the April priority submission window, open for only one month, the centre received more than a thousand "AI-native" films from twenty countries and regions, among them the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Japan.

Nice, Lelouch and ethics

The European branch of this current is the World AI Film Festival (WAIFF). Marco Landi, a former global business director at Apple, founded it, and the first edition took place in April 2025 in Nice. The event describes itself as the world's first international celebration of film made with AI. The chair of the first edition's jury was the Oscar and Palme d'Or winner, director Claude Lelouch. The festival collected more than 1 500 entries from more than 80 countries, and the prize pool exceeded 20 000 euro. Alongside the competition the organisers run a "mock trial" devoted to the ethics of AI film, a discussion about the limits of using another person's face, voice and style. Support came from the French film companies Pathé and Banijay. The second edition in 2026 is chaired by Gong Li, an actress known for "Red Sorghum", "To Live" and "Curse of the Golden Flower". The choice of a Chinese star to lead a competition about technology shows that this current is no longer a niche curiosity but a separate festival circuit with its own stars, sponsors and assessment criteria.