The CIA thrillers “Argo” and “Zero Dark Thirty” have won top screenplay honors from the Writers Guild of America.
The guild’s adapted screenplay award Sunday went to Chris Terrio for “Argo,” director Ben Affleck’s tale of the CIA’s daring masquerade of six U.S. diplomats as a Hollywood film crew to rescue them from Iran during the hostage crisis there.
Mark Boal won the prize for original screenplay for “Zero Dark Thirty,” director Kathryn Bigelow’s chronicle of the CIA’s manhunt for al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
Director Malik Bendjelloul won the documentary award for “Searching for Sugar Man,” his portrait of acclaimed but largely forgotten 1970s musician Rodriguez.
The guild was the last of Hollywood’s major trade unions to weigh in on the year’s top films before next Sunday’s Academy Awards.
“Argo” has emerged as the best-picture favorite for the Oscars after sweeping top prizes at earlier film honors, including the Golden Globes and awards from the Directors Guild of America, the Screen Actors Guild and the Producers Guild of America.
Among the guild’s TV winners:
— Drama series: “Breaking Bad,” written by Sam Catlin, Vince Gilligan, Peter Gould, Gennifer Hutchison, George Mastras, Thomas Schnauz and Moira Walley-Beckett.
— Comedy series: “Louie,” written by Pamela Adlon, Vernon Chatman and Louis C.K.
— New series: “Girls,” written by Judd Apatow, Lesley Arfin, Lena Dunham, Sarah Heyward, Bruce Eric Kaplan, Jenni Konner, Deborah Schoeneman and Dan Sterling.
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