Chinese video platform giant ByteDance pledged on Sunday (February 15) to clamp down on Seedance, a controversial artificial intelligence (AI) video creation tool, the BBC reported.
Read also | What is Seedance 2.0? Movie AI video generator
Disney, Paramount write cease and desist letter to ByteDance
The development comes after Disney and other entertainment giants threatened legal action. On February 13 (local time), Disney issued a cease-and-desist notice to ByteDance, claiming the company had given Seedance access to a “pirate library” of copyrighted characters owned by the studio, including properties from Marvel and Star Wars.
Paramount sent a similar letter to Skydance on February 14, accusing ByteDance of engaging in “flagrant infringement” of the company’s intellectual property (IP) through its Seedance video AI and Seedream generative image platforms, Variety reported. Paramount also accused the Chinese firm of illegally using its intellectual property, citing titles such as “South Park,” “Star Trek,” “The Godfather” and “Dora the Explorer,” among others.
In response to the letters, ByteDance told the BBC on Monday that it “respects intellectual property rights and we have heard concerns about Seedance 2.0”. He added: “We are taking steps to strengthen current safeguards as we work to prevent unauthorized use of intellectual property and likeness by users.
The Motion Picture Association, which represents major US studios such as Warner Bros Discovery, Paramount and Netflix, demanded that the tool “immediately end the infringing activity”, the BBC reported.
Furthermore, the actors’ union SAG-AFTRA also accused the video creation tool of flagrant violations.
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, prompts can also contain other videos and images.
The BBC said that in the last days before the tool’s launch, videos made using the latest version had been proliferating on the internet. Although the creations drew praise from many for their realistic quality, the trend raised concerns among several Hollywood studios and entertainment industry figures.
“It’s probably behind us”: Hollywood after the Seedance video
Rhett Reese, co-writer of Deadpool & Wolverine, Zombieland, and Now You See Me: Now You Don’t, shared a 15-second video of Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt exchanging blows on a bridge littered with rubble. Reese, who shared the video on his X account, wrote: “I hate to say it. It’s probably over for us.”
The video was first shared by Irish filmmaker Ruairí Robinson, director of the 2013 sci-fi horror film The Last Days on Mars, who wrote: “This was a 2-line challenge in seedance 2. If Hollywood is cooked, the guys are right, maybe it’s cooked in Hollywood, the guys are cooked too, idk.”
Read also | AI generated Tom Cruise vs Brad Pitt video alarms Hollywood studios
Seedance courts controversy at home
According to a report in the South China Morning Post, in addition to the alleged IP violations cited by US entertainment conglomerates, the video-making tool has also sparked controversy domestically over its ability to generate users’ voices from their photos.
Artificial intelligence systems trained on data from the open web
The Guardian report suggests that artificial intelligence systems, including chatbots, image generators and video-making tools, are being trained on data sourced from the open web, which includes copyrighted material such as novels, art and film clips. However, ByteDance has never disclosed the datasets it uses to train its video generation tool.