The Walt Disney Company has sent a cease-and-desist letter to ByteDance over its new Seedance 2.0 AI video model, alleging that the platform has been stocked “with a pirated library of Disney’s copyrighted characters” and has treated its intellectual property, from Star Wars to Marvel to Family Guy, as if it were “free public domain clip art.”
As per media reports, Axios has first reported the letter from Disney, which has followed mounting backlash against Seedance 2.0 from the Motion Picture Association and, earlier, the Human Artistry Campaign, whose members have included SAG-AFTRA and the DGA.
“ByteDance’s virtual smash-and-grab of Disney’s IP is willful, pervasive, and totally unacceptable,” the entertainment giant’s counsel has written.
The Human Artistry Campaign has called Seedance 2.0, launched this week by the parent company of TikTok, “an attack on every creator around the world. Stealing human creators’ work in an attempt to replace them with AI-generated slop is destructive to our culture: stealing isn’t innovation.”
Seedance 2.0 has triggered outrage after a series of highly authentic-looking deepfakes based on copyrighted Hollywood film and television intellectual property have gone viral. These have included a Tom Cruise vs Brad Pitt fight scene and alternative endings to the series Stranger Things, among others.
On Wednesday, the Motion Picture Association has called on ByteDance “to immediately cease its infringing activity.”
“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. 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,” the studio trade group has said as per reports.
Separately, Disney has earlier sent a similar cease-and-desist letter to Google in December, and its tools including Gemini and Nano Banana have now started denying prompts that contain Disney-owned characters.
In addition, Disney has signed a $1 billion deal with OpenAI to license characters to the generative video app Sora, seeking a position in the growing AI video market.
