“Argo” continues to shake up the Oscar race by taking the top honor at the Producers Guild Awards on Saturday. Ben Affleck, coming off winning Golden Globe Awards for best motion picture drama and director for the real-life drama, received the award handed out at the Beverly Hilton Hotel.
“I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that I’m still working as an actor,” he said in his acceptance speech.
Affleck also stars in “Argo” as the CIA operative who orchestrated a daring rescue of six American embassy employees during the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis. George Clooney and Grant Heslov share the producer award with Affleck as “Argo” beat out the Civil War saga “Lincoln,” which has a leading 12 Academy Awards nominations.
Other nominees in the PGA movie category were “Les Miserables,” ”Zero Dark Thirty,” ”Beasts of the Southern Wild,” ”Django Unchained,” ”Life of Pi,” ”Moonrise Kingdom,” ”Silver Linings Playbook,” and Skyfall.”
Along with honors from other Hollywood professional groups such as actors, directors and writers guilds, the producer prizes have become part of the preseason sorting out contenders for Academy Awards.
The big winner often goes on to claim the best-picture honor at the Oscars on Feb. 24.
Disney’s “Wreck-It Ralph” won the guild’s animation category, beating “Brave,” ”Frankenweenie,” ”ParaNorman” and “Rise of the Guardians.”
“Searching for Sugar Man” took the documentary prize, beating “A People Uncounted,” ”The Gatekeepers,” ”The Island President,” and “The Other Dream Team.”
Showtime’s “Homeland” won the producer’s award for television drama series, which beat out “Breaking Bad,” ”Downton Abbey,” ”Game of Thrones,” and “Mad Men.”
The ABC sitcom “Modern Family” took the prize for best comedy series for the third straight year, beating “30 Rock,” ”The Big Bang Theory,” ”Curb Your Enthusiasm,” and “Louie.”
AI-Assisted Works Can Get Copyright With Enough Human Creativity, According To U.S. Copyright Office
Artists can copyright works they made with the help of artificial intelligence, according to a new report by the U.S. Copyright Office that could further clear the way for the use of AI tools in Hollywood, the music industry and other creative fields.
The nation's copyright office, which sits in the Library of Congress and is not part of the executive branch, receives about half a million copyright applications per year covering millions of individual works. It has increasingly been asked to register works that are AI-generated.
And while many of those decisions are made on a case-by-case basis, the report issued Wednesday clarifies the office's approach as one based on what the top U.S. copyright official describes as the "centrality of human creativity" in authoring a work that warrants copyright protections.
"Where that creativity is expressed through the use of AI systems, it continues to enjoy protection," said a statement from Register of Copyrights Shira Perlmutter, who directs the office.
An AI-assisted work could be copyrightable if an artist's handiwork is perceptible. A human adapting an AI-generated output with "creative arrangements or modifications" could also make it fall under copyright protections.
The report follows a review that began in 2023 and fielded opinions from thousands of people that ranged from AI developers, to actors and country singers.
It shows the copyright office will continue to reject copyright claims for fully machine-generated content. A person simply prompting a chatbot or AI image generator to produce a work doesn't give that person the ability to copyright that work, according to the report. "Extending protection to material whose expressive elements are determined by a machine ...... Read More