Disney and Paramount are very angry about that new AI video app from the makers of TikTok

AI video platform Seedance, from the makers of TikTok, has caused a furore. Disney has unleashed its lawyers. Paramount has written a stern letter. The latest generative AI drama exploded last week when a viral clip of a brawling Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise provided some handy free advertising for Seedance 2.0 – an AI ... Disney and Paramount are very angry about that new AI video app from the makers of TikTok

AI video platform Seedance, from the makers of TikTok, has caused a furore. Disney has unleashed its lawyers. Paramount has written a stern letter.

The latest generative AI drama exploded last week when a viral clip of a brawling Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise provided some handy free advertising for Seedance 2.0 – an AI video generator made by the Chinese company, ByteDance. (They of TikTok fame.)

After the Pitt-Cruise clip prompted a mix of anger, gloom and fascination from internet dwellers, the corporate beasts began to wake up.

First, Disney: noting a number of clips that featured characters from movies under its ownership, including Marvel superheroes and familiar faces from Star Wars, it scrambled its lawyers on the 13th February – just two days after Seedance 2.0’s launch.

In a cease-and-desist letter, Disney’s lawyers wrote that ByteDance’s “virtual smash and grab of Disney’s IP is willful [sic], pervasive and unacceptable.”

Paramount Skydance wasn’t too far behind. It quickly noticed that properties under its ownership – Star Trek, Mission: Impossible and more – had also appeared in Seedance 2.0 video clips.

This led Paramount boss Gabriel Miller to write his own cease-and-desist letter, which said that Seedance “contains vivid depictions of Paramount’s famous and iconic franchises and characters, which are protected under copyright law, trademark law, and the law of unfair competition (among other doctrines).”

Since then, ByteDance has responded to these angry letters, with the company telling the BBC today (16th February) that it “respects intellectual property rights and we have heard the concerns regarding Seedance 2.0.”

The company adds that it is “taking steps to strengthen current safeguards as we work to prevent the unauthorised use of intellectual property and likeness by users.”

If all this sounds weirdly familiar, that’s because it’s the exact same scenario that unfolded last October, when OpenAI launched Sora 2.0, its own AI video generator.

Within days, social media channels filled up with copyright-infringing videos of characters like Pikachu, Nintendo’s Mario and SpongeBob SquarePants either doing awful things or having awful things done to them.

Stern letters and legal threats ensued, and OpenAI pledged to put in guardrails to prevent its machine from spewing out quite so much IP-stealing footage.

In short: two multi-billion dollar companies, that employ some of the cleverest computer scientists on the planet, didn’t anticipate that their platforms – which turn a handful of words into moving images – would be used to create imagery that might infringe copyright.

At no stage did they consider whether their ‘training data’ might contain copyrighted characters that would likely get them into legal hot water.

Nor did they beta test their software among smaller groups of users to see what might emerge if questionable or IP-busting prompts were typed in.

Alternatively, OpenAI and ByteDance released these platforms knowing the sorts of videos that would emerge, but calculated that the initial burst of viral clips, headlines and even legal threats were all marketing that money couldn’t buy. No, that can’t be what’s going on here. That would be far too cynical.

Read more: AI clip of Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt fight goes viral, prompting a stern response from the MPA

For all their furious words about theft and smash-and-grabs, Hollywood companies aren’t particularly opposed to generative AI, either.

Months after Disney clubbed with Universal together to sue another AI company, Midjourney, it signed a deal with OpenAI which will allow Mouse House characters to appear on Sora 2.0, while Disney+ will eventually get a widget that allows subscribers to generate AI clips featuring Disney’s non-human celebrities.

The plagiarism machine is morally, legally and environmentally terrible (a “bottomless pit off plagiarism!”) and must be stopped – unless there are lucrative deals to be made, in which case it’s okay.

We’ll bring you more news on mass entertainment’s dying gasps as it comes in.