{"id":742650,"date":"2026-07-04T11:31:30","date_gmt":"2026-07-04T11:31:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/742650\/"},"modified":"2026-07-04T11:31:30","modified_gmt":"2026-07-04T11:31:30","slug":"china-backed-ai-tool-behind-fake-brad-pitt-fight-making-hollywood-inroads","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/742650\/","title":{"rendered":"China-backed AI tool behind fake Brad Pitt fight making Hollywood inroads"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Earlier this year, a widely circulated 15-second AI-generated video<\/a> of Brad Pitt fighting Tom Cruise on a rooftop sparked outrage across Hollywood. One screenwriter called the cinematic clip \u201cterrifying.\u201d<\/a> The Motion Picture Assn. demanded the company behind the artificial intelligence tool \u2014 Chinese tech giant ByteDance \u2014 halt its \u201cinfringing activity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite the uproar, the former majority owner of TikTok has quietly continued to court filmmakers, independent artists and executives who are eager to adopt the AI video generation model called Seedance. <\/p>\n

Seedance was launched in the U.S. this spring<\/a> at a Santa Monica event hosted by a group linked to the Chinese government.<\/p>\n

ByteDance began hiring for 100 open roles<\/a>, signed multiple independent filmmakers and artists and held private conversations about financing AI films. The company threw a lavish caviar party at Cannes<\/a> and in May hosted panels<\/a> promoting its cinematic tool at Amazon\u2019s AI on the Lot event in Culver City.<\/p>\n

\u201cLike any new technology, Hollywood ultimately has no choice but to react to market realities. And that reality is that the new crop of AI-empowered Hollywood creatives see Seedance as having the most powerful video generator in the market right now,\u201d said Peter Csathy of Creative Media, an entertainment and AI business advisory firm.<\/p>\n

Joel Kuwahara, the animation producer on early seasons of \u201cThe Simpsons,\u201d echoed Hollywood\u2019s quiet embrace. <\/p>\n

\u201cWithin the industry, I know that a lot of studios haven\u2019t approved Seedance, but yet with a wink and a nod, they\u2019re allowing Seedance to be used. … It\u2019s kind of like a \u2018don\u2019t ask, don\u2019t tell\u2019 kind of a thing,\u2019\u201d Kuwahara told The Times. <\/p>\n

ByteDance declined to comment on its U.S. expansion.<\/p>\n

The race to build the dominant AI video model has created a fierce rivalry, pitting U.S. companies against the fast-closing Chinese competitors. On the American side, there are Google Veo<\/a> and startups such as Runway and Luma. OpenAI\u2019s Sora<\/a> has discontinued its video tool.<\/p>\n

The Chinese challengers Seedance<\/a>, Kling and Alibaba\u2019s HappyHorse have rapidly closed the gap on cinematic realism and have upstaged their American rivals by undercutting them on cost.<\/p>\n

According to Artificial Analysis<\/a>, a company that tracks cost and performances of different AI models, China\u2019s Seedance is currently the most cost-effective and high-quality option compared with U.S. competitors. Seedance costs $9 per minute for video with audio generation, significantly lower than the $24 per minute required by Google\u2019s Veo model.<\/p>\n

That makes it an attractive tool for independent filmmakers like Rupert Wainwright, who who recently meet with Seedance executives at AI on the Lot<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He wants to use the the tool to help make his feature-length film called \u201cSebastian<\/a>,\u201d about a Christian saint set in 3rd century Rome. The hybrid AI film will be shot partly on location in Europe and partly generated with artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the equivalent to when streaming a movie over the internet onto your TV finally became possible,\u201d Wainwright said.<\/p>\n

\"A <\/p>\n

Kavan Cardoza.<\/p>\n

(Kayla Bartkowski\/Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n

\"A <\/p>\n

A scene from \u201cThe Chronicles of Bone.\u201d<\/p>\n

(Kayla Bartkowski\/Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n

In May, Steven Schneider, the producer of \u201cParanormal Activity,\u201d famous for its handheld grainy footage-style filmmaking, announced \u201cTerrarium<\/a>,\u201d his first hybrid AI horror production. The film\u2019s director, Jason Zada, said it will be entirely generated using Seedance\u2019s model.<\/p>\n

Zada\u2019s filmmaking workflow involves writing, casting, prompting and editing all simultaneously, allowing him to rewrite scripts based on \u201cdailies\u201d generated by AI that day. <\/p>\n

He estimates that generating 15 seconds of high-definition video costs only $5.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe could go from a very detailed outline, very detailed characters and have it be a bit more fluid, because we could regen[erate] as much as we want,\u201d Zada said.<\/p>\n

Zada plans to shoot the movie first on a soundstage with real actors and will decide later which parts work better traditionally and what should be done synthetically. He\u2019s a member of the Directors Guild of America and said he will be employing union actors for his hybrid AI film. <\/p>\n

Seedance also has continued building ties by offering indie creators, AI-native studios and filmmakers free monthly credits<\/a> and access to unreleased features. These \u201ctastemakers\u201d<\/a> beta-test its models, offer feedback on what works, and use it for their personal filmmaking projects \u2014 which creates corporate brand awareness.<\/p>\n

Kavan Cardoza is one such breakout filmmaker. His AI fantasy series \u201cThe Chronicle of Bones,\u201d<\/a> which uses Seedance, features half a dozen distinct storylines and an ensemble of characters. New episodes, each not more than 30 minutes, are released on YouTube once a month. The one-person filmmaker averages 3 million views per episode and has cultivated a YouTube audience of 500,000.<\/p>\n

Most filmmakers are tool agnostic, but lately Cardoza has become completely dependent on Seedance, he said, because it solves a persistent problem: maintaining character consistency between shots. <\/p>\n

\"A <\/p>\n

Kavan Cardoza unmasked.<\/p>\n

(Kayla Bartkowski\/Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n

To create one of his characters, \u201cthe last lost boy,\u201d Cardoza took self-portraits wearing a three-faced mask and a tattered brown jacket. He used those reference images for the AI character and transforms them into a stylized person, with a personality, backstory and visual details. He fed those images back to Seedance to get consistent characters \u2014 repeating the process for each member of the cast.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t go get Brad Pitt because he costs like $5, 10, 20 million to be in my film,\u201d Cardoza said. \u201cI can probably get a synthetic actor that will act just as good as Brad Pitt in the future. That\u2019s crazy to me.\u201d <\/p>\n

Cardoza has copyrighted his script and characters, and aims to eventually attract major studio interest to turn his intellectual property into a film which comes with a built-in fan base.<\/p>\n

Such plans are likely to face resistance from the performers union SAG-AFTRA, which has decried the use of synthetic actors such as Tilly Norwood<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe rise of Seedance comes down to [its] focus on pleasing filmmakers and making things that look filmic,\u201d said Stephan Vladimir Bugaj, senior vice president of JioStar, a joint venture between Disney and India\u2019s Reliance Industries.<\/p>\n

ByteDance introduced timeline-based prompting so filmmakers can actually pick specific moments and tweak them, and improved the understanding of camera direction, physics, lighting and fluidity of action. All of this, Bugaj said, \u201cunlocked a kind of spectacle filmmaking that the other models are not delivering quite as well.\u201d <\/p>\n

The company\u2019s tool has been in such high demand, Zada said, that Seedance has been quoting some major Hollywood studios $2 million for unrestricted special access.<\/p>\n

While acknowledging Seedance\u2019s popularity and its U.S. expansion, Amit Jain, chief executive of Luma, said its ceiling in Hollywood is severely limited. Traditional studios might adopt Chinese models for some preproduction tasks such as concepting, but the geopolitical and intellectual property risks for commercial generations are too prohibitive.<\/p>\n

\u201cCan you imagine Disney using the ByteDance model for the next \u2018Snow White\u2019? No way,\u201d Jain said. \u201cThis is not even a technical argument, really. That\u2019s the reality.\u201d<\/p>\n

Luma has been making inroads into Hollywood selling its software but has separately funded a production service company<\/a> to teach filmmakers to make hybrid AI films using its tools.<\/p>\n

Despite conservative production budgets, AI spending by media companies is projected to grow from $2.6 billion to $12.5 billion from 2024 to 2029, according to a State of Generative AI Media<\/a> report.<\/p>\n

\"A <\/p>\n

Kavan Cardoza flips through pages of his fine-art photography book.<\/p>\n

(Kayla Bartkowski\/Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n

Bugaj warned that the quality and competitive price of Chinese models should be a \u201cwake-up call\u201d for American players fighting for market share.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not loyal,\u201d said Zada, the filmmaker. \u201cWhatever is the best, we\u2019re going to use it.\u201d<\/p>\n