🎥 Hollywood Pushes Back at ByteDance: AI Is Generating Darth Vader and Spider-Man Too Convincingly

Seedance 2.0, released last week by Chinese tech giant ByteDance, easily generates high-quality videos featuring famous movie characters with actors' voices. The results have sparked outrage among performers and major studios.

The actors' union SAG-AFTRA states that the unauthorized use of actors' likenesses and voices undermines their ability to earn a livelihood.

💰 Disney accused ByteDance of creating a "pirate library," where users can generate virtually any character on demand—from Marvel superheroes to Star Wars icons. Meanwhile, Paramount pointed to its own franchises reportedly available in the tool, including South Park, Star Trek, SpongeBob SquarePants, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The studios are demanding that ByteDance immediately stop the alleged copyright violations.

💡 ByteDance states that it "respects intellectual property rights" and has pledged to strengthen its safeguards. As an initial step, the company has disabled the option to upload photos of real people for video generation.

🔍 In the U.S., studios have so far issued formal legal notices. In Japan, however, authorities have already launched an official investigation into ByteDance over AI-generated videos featuring characters from the anime series Ultraman and Detective Conan.

Who should AI companies pay for content?

❤️ — The actors
🔥 — The studios
🎃 — They don't owe anyone anything!

@hiaimediaen