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ByteDance pledged tighter safeguards for Seedance after cease-and-desist letters from The Walt Disney Company and Paramount Global over alleged IP violations. Studios and unions warn that the AI video tool infringes copyrighted content and likeness rights.
Chinese video platform giant ByteDance on Sunday, 15 February, pledged to curb Seedance, the controversial artificial intelligence (AI) video-making tool, BBC reported.
Disney, Paramount write a cease-and-desist letter to ByteDance
The development comes after Disney and other entertainment giants threatened legal action. On 13 February (local time), Disney issued a cease-and-desist notice to ByteDance, alleging that the company provided Seedance with access to a “pirated library” featuring copyrighted characters owned by the studio, including properties from Marvel and Star Wars.
A similar letter was sent by Paramount Skydance on 14 February, accusing ByteDance of engaging in “blatant infringement” of the company's intellectual property (IP) through its Seedance video and Seedream image generative AI platforms, Variety reported. Paramount also accused the Chinese firm of unlawfully exploiting its intellectual property, citing titles such as “South Park”, “Star Trek”, “The Godfather”, and “Dora the Explorer”, among others.
Responding to these letters, ByteDance told the BBC on Monday that it “respects intellectual property rights and we have heard the concerns regarding Seedance 2.0”. It added, “We are taking steps to strengthen current safeguards as we work to prevent the unauthorised use of intellectual property and likeness by users.”
The Motion Picture Association, which represents major US studios like Warner Bros Discovery, Paramount and Netflix, has demanded that the tool “immediately cease its infringing activity”, BBC reported.
Further, the actors' union SAG-AFTRA has also accused the video-making tool of blatant infringement.
What is Seedance 2.0?
According to a CNBC report, Seedance 2.0 is an artificial intelligence tool capable of generating realistic videos from a simple user prompt. However, the prompts can also contain other videos and images.
The BBC reported that in the last few days before the tool launched, videos made with the latest version have multiplied online. Although the creations drew praise from many for their lifelike quality, the trend has raised concerns among several Hollywood studios and prominent figures in the entertainment industry.
"It’s likely over for us": Hollywood after Seedance videos
Rhett Reese, co-writer of Deadpool & Wolverine, Zombieland, and Now You See Me: Now You Don’t, shared a 15-second video of actors Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt exchanging punches on a rubble-strewn bridge. Sharing the video on his X account, Reese wrote, "I hate to say it. It’s likely over for us."
The video was first shared by Irish film-maker Ruairí Robinson, director of 2013 sci-fi horror The Last Days on Mars, who wrote, “This was a 2-line prompt in seedance 2. If Hollywood is cooked, guys are right, maybe Hollywood is cooked, guys are cooked too, idk.”
Seedance courts controversy domestically
According to a report in the South China Morning Post, apart from the alleged IP violations cited by the US entertainment conglomerates, the video-making tool has also courted controversy domestically for its ability to generate users' voices from their photos.
AI systems trained on data from the open web
A Guardian report suggests that AI systems, including chatbots, image generators, and video-making tools, are trained on data sourced from the open web, which includes copyright-protected material such as novels, art, and film clips. However, ByteDance has never revealed the data sets it uses to train its video-generation tool.
English (US) ·