Director Nick Ball, who’s well established as a director Down Under, has landed his first U.S. representation, signing with Furlined, the L.A.-based production house headed by president Diane McArter.
Most of Ball’s work has been for Australian/New Zealand clients, including artful comedy spots for such clients as Kia (from agency Innocean), Bonds (a campaign out of Banjo, Sydney), Sky Television (DDB New Zealand), Wrigley’s (DDB Sydney) and the Melbourne International Film Festival (Ogilvy Melbourne).
“There’s humor in everything,” said Ball. “But it’s in the way you establish the context that delivers the laughs. My work is about displacement. I’m always looking for the unexpected. I’m searching for an irreverent tone, but irreverence with a reason; not just for the sake of it.”
Ball hails from Australia–where he is handled by production company Finch–and his work has been recognized at many award shows, including D&AD, ONE Show and Cannes.
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