The media industry might have just won a major victory over AI after the biggest US studios and streamers pushed back against ByteDance not doing enough to stop copyright infringement. 

Netflix and Warner Bros. Discovery have joined Disney and Paramount in sending cease-and-desist letters to TikTok’s owner over its AI video generator tool Seedance 2.0 using their characters. These media giants may be competitors, but they’ve all come together to draw a line in the sand for Bytedance and AI copyright infringement. 

ByteDance released Seedance 2.0 last week, boasting that it’s “at the forefront of the industry” for video generation, since it can create highly realistic and cinematic videos with just a few prompts. A 15-second clip of Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise fighting generated by the platform recently went viral, and the videos generated from the tool are drawing condemnation from Hollywood studios and actors union SAG-AFTRA. 

Their message is clear: If AI companies want to do business with the screen industry, they have to shape up and play by the sector’s rules. 

And ByteDance seems to have gotten the memo. Following these legal shots across the bow, the Chinese techco said on Monday that it will make an effort to stop the unauthorized use of IPs on Seedance 2.0. In a statement to Kidscreen today, a ByteDance spokesperson said the company “respects intellectual property rights, and we have heard the concerns regarding Seedance 2.0. We are taking steps to strengthen current safeguards as we work to prevent the unauthorized use of intellectual property and likeness by users.” However, the company did not elaborate on what those steps might be. 

Meanwhile, a court in Northern California has ruled in favor of Cameo—the app that lets celebrities create personalized videos for fans, opening up opportunities for kids brands and creators—in a suit to prevent OpenAI from using the word “Cameo” in its products and features. OpenAI had been using the name for a feature in its AI-powered video generation app Sora 2 that allows users to insert their likenesses into AI-generated videos. The similarity is enough to cause confusion, the court ruled. 

Coupled with the ByteDance news, this could be further evidence that the era of curious and non-hostile relationships between media companies and AI companies is coming to an end. Now that companies are seeing clear examples of the biggest AI players profiting from the use of their brands, it makes sense that they would demand these techcos stay on the right side of copyright. 

OpenAI and Disney have already provided a blueprint for what a partnership between these warring industries could look like, with a wide-ranging licensing agreement that allows fans to generate images and videos featuring more than 200 Disney characters in Sora and ChatGPT for use on social media. Disney will even feature some of that content on Disney+. And crucially, immediately after the agreement, Disney ordered Google to stop allowing its own AI platforms to generate Disney-owned characters.

In recent months, the industry has become inundated by AI copyright battles—Midjourney and MiniMax were hit by joint complaints from Disney, NBCUniversal and WBD last year. When Kidscreen recently asked readers what they thought the results of these legal actions would be, some argued it would lead to better outcomes, while others felt it was a lost cause and that there’d be no stopping the pirates and new tools that pop up every day. But now that media giants have shown they’re not afraid to fight back against AI companies in court, deals like the one between Disney and OpenAI are looking more and more like the future of the biz. 

Image from the movie Superman,  a character who has allegedly appeared in Seedance 2.0 outputs. Image courtesy of WBD.