{"id":290854,"date":"2026-02-19T01:46:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-19T01:46:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/290854\/"},"modified":"2026-02-19T01:46:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-19T01:46:08","slug":"mid-ai-scandal-hollywood-studios-threaten-bytedance-with-legal-action","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/290854\/","title":{"rendered":"Mid AI scandal, Hollywood studios threaten ByteDance with legal action"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

After the fake video of Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt fighting went viral<\/a>, a surge of AI-generated content from Seedance 2.0 flooded the internet.<\/p>\n

Some fans were using the new AI video generator, backed by ByteDance, to refashion the finales for shows like \u201cGame of Thrones\u201d and \u201cStranger Things.\u201d<\/a> Others created battle scenes between iconic superheroes like Wolverine and Superman or between a Transformer and Godzilla.<\/p>\n

As these Seedance videos amassed millions of views on social media, industry guilds like SAG-AFTRA<\/a> and the Motion Picture Assn<\/a>. have criticized the AI platform that was launched last week. Now, many major Hollywood studios are threatening to take legal action against ByteDance, the same Chinese parent that oversees TikTok.<\/a><\/p>\n

Netflix, Warner Bros. Discovery, Paramount and Disney have all sent individual cease and desist letters, detailing the unauthorized reproduction of each of the studios\u2019 copyrighted intellectual property.<\/p>\n

Netflix and Warner Bros. Discovery were the latest studios to send cease and desists letter to ByteDance on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Netflix calls Seedance \u201ca high-speed privacy engine\u201d and says that they \u201cwill not stand by and watch ByteDance treat our valued IP as free, public domain clip art,\u201d as stated in the letter. The streamer also cites the illegal use of sets derived from \u201cSquid Game,\u201d costumes from \u201cBridgerton\u201d and character design from \u201cKPop Demon Hunters.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

Warner Bros. Discovery looks to repurposed content, including characters from the \u201cHarry Potter\u201d and \u201cLord of the Rings\u201d franchises, as well as superheroes like Batman, as \u201c blatant infringement\u201d by ByteDance. The studio argues that it\u2019s clear that their AI technology was trained on Warner Bros. copyrighted material \u201cwithout authorization.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut the users are not the ones at the root cause of the infringement; they are merely building on the foundation of infringement already laid by ByteDance as Seedance comes pre-loaded with Warner Bros. Discovery\u2019s copyrighted characters,\u201d wrote the studios\u2019 legal executive vice president Wayne Smith. \u201cThat was a deliberate design choice by ByteDance.\u201d<\/p>\n

Disney and Paramount were the first of the studios to call out ByteDance, sending their letters last Friday and Saturday. Disney accuses ByteDance of loading its Seedance service \u201cwith a pirated library of Disney\u2019s copyrighted characters from Star Wars, Marvel, and other Disney franchises.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOver Disney\u2019s well-publicized objections, ByteDance is hijacking Disney\u2019s characters by reproducing, distributing, and creating derivative works featuring those characters. ByteDance\u2019s virtual smash-and-grab of Disney\u2019s IP is willful, pervasive, and totally unacceptable,\u201d Disney\u2019s attorney David Singer wrote, per Axios.<\/a><\/p>\n

Paramount\u2019s cease and desist letter was reviewed by The Times and makes similar assertions about ByteDance\u2019s unapproved use of copyrighted material.<\/p>\n

ByteDance has since pledged to implement more safeguards to protect copyrighted material in response to these letters.<\/p>\n

\u201cByteDance respects intellectual property rights and we have heard the concerns regarding Seedance 2.0,\u201d a company spokesperson said in a statement shared with CNBC.<\/a> \u201cWe are taking steps to strengthen current safeguards as we work to prevent the unauthorized use of intellectual property and likeness by users.\u201d<\/p>\n

But with or without the safeguards, Dan Purcell, chief executive of Midnight Labs, an AI-powered company that specializes in IP protection for high-value entertainment, said these letters might be a bit of a delayed reaction from the studios.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce synthetic content is generated, it spreads instantly and at a massive scale. By the time lawyers engage, the damage is done,\u201d said Purcell in a statement. \u201cThe only path forward is strict licensing, real-time enforcement, and consequences that actually hurt. Reactive letters won\u2019t fix this. The industry needs to move at the speed of AI \u2014 not the speed of litigation.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After the fake video of Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt fighting went viral, a surge of AI-generated content…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":290855,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[365,363,364,161205,610,68771,161206,2398,161204,7335,131516,40571,6287,1094,111,139,69,421,157502,23367,145,3204],"class_list":{"0":"post-290854","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-blatant-infringement","12":"tag-bytedance","13":"tag-character-design","14":"tag-dan-purcell","15":"tag-disney","16":"tag-individual-cease","17":"tag-intellectual-property","18":"tag-ip","19":"tag-letter","20":"tag-material","21":"tag-netflix","22":"tag-new-zealand","23":"tag-newzealand","24":"tag-nz","25":"tag-paramount","26":"tag-seedance","27":"tag-studio","28":"tag-technology","29":"tag-warner-bros-discovery"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290854","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=290854"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290854\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/290855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=290854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=290854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=290854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}