AI Disclosure: What Festivals and Funds Are Asking in 2026

Two things are true at once about disclosure in 2026. The requirements are now common enough that you should assume you will be asked. And they are inconsistent enough that no summary, including this one, can be relied on as the answer for your specific submission.

So this article is not a rulebook. It is a description of the shape of the questions, and a method for being ready to answer them.

Verify at the source, every time

Rules on this have changed rapidly, several major bodies have revised their positions, and coverage of those changes has not always matched the actual regulations. Before you submit anywhere, read the current regulations of that specific body, for that specific edition, in the primary document rather than in an article about it.

That includes this article. We are describing a pattern, not stating anyone's rules.

The four questions that keep appearing

Across submission forms and fund applications, the questions cluster into four kinds.

• Was generative AI used in this work, yes or no. Often with no room for nuance, which is a problem when the honest answer is that it was used for one element.
• Where was it used. Image, moving image, voice, music, script, editing, restoration, translation, subtitles.
• How central was it. Some bodies distinguish between AI as a tool inside a conventional pipeline and AI as the generative source of the images themselves.
• Do you hold the rights, and were any real people, existing works or third party materials involved in the training or the production of what appears on screen.

The distinction that matters most

Almost every framework that has been published draws a line somewhere between assistance and generation. A film that used a generative tool to clean up a sound recording is treated differently from a film whose images were generated.

Where exactly that line sits differs by body, and it is the thing most worth checking, because it is where a project can be compliant with one institution and ineligible at another with what looks like the same policy.

Keep the record from day one

The single most useful practical habit, and it costs almost nothing if you start at the beginning and is painful to reconstruct later.

• Which tools were used, for what, and roughly when.
• Which elements are generated, which are captured, and which are composited from both.
• The basis on which any real person, voice, brand, artwork or piece of music appears.
• Who holds rights in the output under the terms of service that applied at the time.
• Your written agreements with any supplier about all of the above.

If a production company cannot give you this record on request, that is information about how they work.

Disclosure is not the same as a problem

It is worth separating two anxieties that often get conflated. Being asked to declare something is not the same as being penalised for it. Many bodies ask in order to categorise, to inform juries, or to build a picture of a changing field.

The genuine risk is not disclosure. It is inaccurate disclosure, or a discovery later that contradicts what was declared. That is a much larger problem than any policy, and it is entirely within your control.

What this means for development materials

Most proof of concept films, pitch trailers and sizzles are development and financing tools. They are shown in meetings, not submitted to competitions, and no eligibility question arises.

Two things change that. If the piece is released publicly it may be read as a work in its own right. And if the finished feature later uses material or techniques from the proof, questions can attach to the feature rather than to the short.

So the useful discipline is to decide early what the film is: a private tool, or a public work. The answer changes what you should build, what you should clear, and what you should record.

The one promise nobody should make you

That your film will be eligible somewhere. A supplier does not control a festival's rules, cannot predict revisions, and has no standing to guarantee any body's decision. We say this in our own scope of work because the alternative is a promise we would have no way to keep.

What a supplier can promise is accuracy: an honest, complete and documented account of how the work was made, so that whatever you are asked, you can answer it truthfully and immediately.

The record we keep on every project is part of the process described on the proof of concept page.

Assume you will be asked to declare, verify the rules in each body's primary regulations rather than in coverage of them, and keep a production record from day one. The real risk is not disclosure, it is inaccurate disclosure, and no supplier can promise eligibility anywhere.