Chicago-based post house Optimus has inked a deal to buy offline editorial shop Edit Sweet, Chicago. Plans call for Edit Sweet staffers—including partner/editor Jan Maitland, editors Katie Wrobel, Craig Lewandowski, Tim Kloehn and Steve Mach—to work out of the Optimus facility. Optimus president Tom Duff related that his company intends to launch a Santa Monica-based operation to be headed by Edit Sweet partner/editor Jim Staskauskas, who is slated to move to Southern California.….. Backyard Productions, the Venice, Calif.-headquartered production house headed by founders, executive producer Blair Stribley and head of sales Roy Skillicorn, has launched Transistor Studios, a new media group under the aegis of digital producer Damon Meena and creative director Jared Plummer. The new venture will specialize in creating design-oriented Web sites, DVDs, motion graphics and interactive online experiences….Director David Emery has joined bicoastal Treat for spot representation….ARF & Co., Hoboken, N.J., has signed director Ross Whitaker…cccp ny has added director Paul Riccio to its roster…. Los Angeles-based animation house Duck Soup Studios has signed Evil Cat Land, a directing team consisting of Walter Santucci, Pete Doan, Seth Strong and Layron DeJarnette. The directorial ensemble is named after the Evil Cat character, star of several Santucci-directed underground films which toured internationally as part of Spike and Mike’s Sick and Twisted Festival…. Director Cadmo Quintero has joined Metro Pictures, Marina del Rey, Calif….Flame artist Joe Wenkoff has come on board Red Car New York…..Marty Orzio, a co-executive creative director at Merkley Newmam Harty & Partners, New York, on the Mercedes-Benz account has left the agency to pursue other options. His duties will be assumed by Randy Saitta and Andy Hirsch, co-executive creative directors on the Mercedes business…. Minneapolis-headquartered agency Fallon is expanding globally. The shop is set to open offices in São Paulo, Brazil, Singapore and Hong Kong. The agency also has offices in New York and London…. San Rafael, Calif.-based Autodesk has finalized its deal to acquire Media 100’s software product line for $16 million cash. The streaming media software solutions from Media 100 figure to enhance the content creation product portfolio of Autodesk’s Montreal-headquartered division Discreet, meaning that Discreet customers will be able to create, distribute, re-purpose and publish media content for consumption via the Internet, corporate Intranets and IP-enabled devices such as cell phones and PDAs…..
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