In national voting completed today, SAG-AFTRA members overwhelmingly approved new, three-year contracts negotiated with the advertising industry covering commercials. The 2013 SAG-AFTRA Commercials Contract and 2013 SAG-AFTRA Radio Recorded Commercials Contract are the first major contracts negotiated by SAG-AFTRA as one union since merger in March 2012.
The contracts cover performers working in commercials made for and reused on television, radio, the Internet and new media, and will result in wage increases and other payments totaling $238 million for all categories of performers, improvements in cable use fees, increases in payments for work on the Internet and new media platforms, an increase in the late payment fee, and an increase in contributions to the health and pension/retirement plans. The approved agreements also achieved recognition for the new union, merged the previous SAG and AFTRA television contracts into a single contract, and renamed the radio contract as a SAG-AFTRA contract.
Overall, the membership of SAG-AFTRA voted 96 percent in favor of the new agreements. Integrity Voting Systems, an impartial election service based in Everett, Wash., facilitated the voting and certified the final count today. The new contracts go into effect immediately, retroactive to April 1, 2013, and remain in force until June 30, 2016.
SAG-AFTRA and the ANA-AAAA Joint Policy Committee on Broadcast Talent Union Relations began formal negotiations in New York City on Feb. 14. The two sides reached a tentative agreement on April 6.
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