Using AI in Your 48 Hours Later Film Challenge Entry At Set Starters Group and 48 Hours Later, we fully recognise that artificial intelligence (AI) can be a genuinely useful tool in today’s creative process. Used thoughtfully, it can help teams brainstorm ideas, map out production schedules, or fine-tune scripts. However, we draw a very clear line between AI as a tool for support and AI as a creative substitute. What You Can and Can’t Do We encourage participants to use AI responsibly only for organisational or administrative tasks. For example, you may use AI tools to: Generate title ideas or concept prompts. Create production documents such as call sheets or shooting schedules. Assist with grammar or proofreading in your written materials. However, any AI-generated creative content: including imagery, video, audio, voice, or scriptwriting, is strictly prohibited. Entries found to include AI-generated creative material will be immediately disqualified. Why This Rule Exists This rule isn’t simply a matter of fairness; it’s about safeguarding the integrity of art and storytelling. Filmmaking is built upon human imagination, collaboration, and emotional truth—qualities no algorithm can replicate. Generative AI tools often draw from the work of real artists, writers, filmmakers, and performers, frequently without consent or credit. By reproducing styles and concepts from this scraped material, they produce imitation rather than innovation. Allowing such output would not only undermine your creative peers, but also dilute the very spirit of this challenge. Our Ethical Stance 48 Hours Later exists to celebrate authentic creativity and human endeavour. To represent a machine’s output as your own is to erase the skill, time, and emotion that make filmmaking meaningful. It diminishes craft, undervalues human effort, and risks cheapening the art form we all care about. We therefore stand firmly against the misuse of AI in creative production, both as a matter of principle and to maintain a level playing field for every filmmaker who participates. In Summary AI support tools are permitted for planning and administration. Generative AI content (visuals, sound, video, writing, voice) is forbidden. Any film containing AI-generated creative material will be disqualified. We’re here to celebrate human creativity, raw, imperfect, passionate, and completely original. That’s what filmmaking is all about.
