Established this past summer as a postproduction, sound design/ mixing and visual effects holding company, New York-headquartered Burning Suits has changed its name in light of the Sept. 11 tragedy. The new moniker is Creative Content Studios (CCS), with holdings that consist of New York houses Super Dupe, East Side Video, Lower East Side Studios, Arc Light, Crush and Post Perfect. Each shop retains its own name and identity under the CCS brand. CCS CEO Steve Hendricks explained that Burning Suits NYC was originally chosen as a name "to connote the spark of creative thinking and outstanding talent. We feel the same message can be conveyed as Creative Content Studios."……MTV Commercials, New York, has been shut down as part of the network’s consolidation….Director/cinematographer Carolyn Chen has joined bicoastal/international Believe Media for exclusive spot representation. Her former directorial roost was Picture Park, Boston and Santa Monica. She continues to be repped as a DP by ICM….Key artists and support personnel from Santa Monica-based 525 Studios are headed for digital studio R!OT, Santa Monica. In tandem with this infusion of talent into R!OT, plans call for 525 to curtail operations by year’s end. Both R!OT and 525 are members of the Liberty Livewire Pictures Group…..Director Scott Young and producer Todd Young, who had both been freelancing, have teamed to launch Addiction Films. Currently housed in interim space in Venice, Calif., the new venture is in the process of lining up sales representation….Director Tony Kaye is being repped as a composer through Amber Music, New York and London….NFL Films, Mount Laurel, N.J., has signed director Pier Nicola D’Amico….Executive producer Dick Gillespie has departed Spoke Films, Los Angeles and Chicago….Writer/director Linda Hassani has joined Steel Productions, New York…J. Walter Thompson San Francisco has merged with Tonic 360, a San Francisco shop that provides Internet-based services for its clientele. The new entity is called JWT & Tonic. Tonic 360 had been operating as a separate JWT unit ever since it was bought by the multinational agency in Oct. 2000. That acquistion took place after JWT’s New York office and Tonic 360 teamed to make a successful pitch for the Sun Microsystems account….Chuck Meehan and Tricia Ting have joined Los Angeles-headquartered ad agency davidandgoliath as associate creative director and art director, respectively. Meehan, who will play a principal role in spearheading work on the Universal Orlando acount, comes over from Publicis & Hal Riney, San Francisco, where he served as a senior writer. Ting was most recently an art director at Leagas Delaney, San Francisco….
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