Hollywood groups are protesting Seedance 2.0, a new AI video model that they claim has swiftly turned into a tool for “blatant” copyright theft.
This week saw the introduction of Seedance 2.0 by ByteDance, the Chinese company that just closed a deal to sell TikTok’s U.S. operations (it still has a share in the new joint venture).Chinese customers of ByteDance’s Jianying app may now use the revised model, and the business says that users of its CapCut app worldwide will soon be able to do the same, according to the Wall Street Journal.
By just entering a text prompt, Seedance enables users to produce videos (currently restricted to 15 seconds in duration), much like programs like OpenAI’s Sora.Like Sora, Seedance also attracted criticism right away for what seemed to be a lack of restrictions on the use of actual people’s likenesses in films and studios’ intellectual property.
Screenwriter Rhett Reese of “Deadpool” said, “I hate to say it,” in response to an X user who shared a short video of Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt fighting, claiming it was made using “a 2 line prompt in Seedance 2.” Most certainly, it is over for us.
Charles Rivkin, CEO of the Motion Picture Association, quickly released a statement urging ByteDance to “immediately discontinue their infringing activity.”
The Chinese AI service Seedance 2.0 has engaged in significant illicit usage of U.S. copyrighted works in a single day,” claimed Rivkin.”ByteDance is ignoring wellestablished copyright legislation that protects the rights of creators and supports millions of American jobs by creating a service that functions without significant controls against infringement.
The actors’ union SAGAFTRA stated that it “stands with the studios in condemning the blatant infringement enabled by Bytedance’s new AI video model Seedance 2.0,” while the Human Artistry Campaign, an initiative supported by Hollywood unions and trade groups, denounced Seedance 2.0 as “an attack on every creator around the world.
The corporation has taken legal action after it was discovered that Seedance videos included Disneyowned characters like SpiderMan, Darth Vader, and Grogu, also known as Baby Yoda.According to Axios, Disney has written a ceaseanddesist letter accusing ByteDance of “hijacking Disney’s characters by replicating, distributing, and generating derivative works incorporating those characters” and charging the Chinese company of a “virtual smash-and-grab of Disney’s IP.
Disney has apparently written a ceaseanddesist letter to Google for similar issues, but it has a threeyear licensing agreement with OpenAI, so it is not necessarily against cooperating with AI businesses.
According to Variety, Paramount sent Bytedance a ceaseanddesist letter on Saturday, following suit.According to the letter, “a large portion of the content produced by the Seed Platforms features striking representations of Paramount’s wellknown and iconic franchises and characters,” and this content “is frequently indistinguishable, both visually and audibly,” from Paramount’s motion pictures and television series.
Leave feedback about this