Motion Pictures Association raises stakes over ByteDance’s illegal AI

Following the lead of several major Hollywood studios, the Motion Picture Association has sent its own cease-and-desist letter to ByteDance, the company behind the controversial AI video generator, Seedance 2.0.

The trade association, which represents the interests of major film and TV studios, sent a notice to the Chinese company, reflecting its members’ collective response to “ByteDance’s pervasive copyright infringement.” MPA argues that Seedance’s unauthorized use of copyrighted materials is a “feature, not a bug.”

The letter, sent last Friday, marks the first time the MPA has forwarded a cease and desist to a major AI firm, and represents a further escalation of tensions between the entertainment industry and an AI comapany.

As the new AI generator spawned fabricated finales for “Game of Thrones” and fictional brawls between Thanos and Superman, Disney, Paramount, Warner Bros., Netflix and Sony Pictures all launched their own legal threats last week. In the cease-and-desist letters, Netflix called Seedance “a high-speed privacy engine;” Warner Bros. argued that ByteDance used their materials to train its AI model, citing “a deliberate design choice;” and Disney claimed that the usage was a “virtual smash-and-grab” of their IP.

This backlash was first triggered by a viral AI video of Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise fighting, a little over a week ago. Due to its realistic nature and unauthorized use of the actors’ likenesses, both SAG-AFTRA and MPA were among the first to call out the platform.

“In a single day, the Chinese AI service Seedance 2.0 has engaged in unauthorized use of U.S. copyrighted works on a massive scale,” wrote Charles Rivkin, chief executive of the Motion Picture Association, previously in a statement. “By launching a service that operates without meaningful safeguards against infringement, ByteDance is disregarding well-established copyright law that protects the rights of creators and underpins millions of American jobs.”

Amid this legal flurry, ByteDance, the company that also oversees TikTok, put out a statement to CNBC, writing that it “respects intellectual property rights” and is “taking steps to strengthen current safeguards as we work to prevent the unauthorized use of intellectual property and likeness by users.”

The MPA said in its letter that “at this point we need far more than general statements.” The association rejects ByteDance’s characterization of the infringement as unauthorized use of intellectual property by its users.

“Rather, it is ByteDance itself that trained its model on the MPA Member Studios’ works without their consent (a necessary first step toward its production of infringing output),” the MPA said, adding that ByteDance “released its service without guardrails; and, by its own conduct, reproduced and distributed content that blatantly infringes the MPA Member Studios’ copyrights.”