Hollywood lawyers up against Chinese AI ‘slop’ as Seedance 2.0 sweeps the internet

It didn’t take long for a Chinese-owned AI company to get slapped with reality from American companies.

ByteDance, known for its short-form video app TikTok, released Seedance 2.0 on February 12, allowing users to create realistic AI videos from simple text prompts.

‘Stealing human creators’ work in an attempt to replace them with AI generated slop is destructive to our culture.’

Quickly, users were recreating lifelike scenes that included everything from influencer videos to Hollywood action sequences. However, it only took Hollywood about 24 hours to make the call to its legal teams about what was being posted online that featured its copyright-protected material.

Disney was seemingly the first to let ByteDance know it needed to stop what it was doing, and the company sent a letter to ByteDance that accused it of pre-packaging its product with “a pirated library of Disney’s copyrighted characters from Star Wars, Marvel, and other Disney franchises, as if Disney’s coveted intellectual property were free public domain clip art.”

According to Axios, Disney attorney David Singer also accused ByteDance of “hijacking Disney’s characters by reproducing, distributing, and creating derivative works.”

“ByteDance’s virtual smash-and-grab of Disney’s IP is willful, pervasive, and totally unacceptable,” the lawyer added.

In response, ByteDance assured the concerned parties that it would be acting to prevent the use of unauthorized materials.

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“We are taking steps to strengthen current safeguards as we work to prevent the unauthorized use of intellectual property and likeness by users,” a spokesperson claimed.

It wasn’t long before huge groups like the Motion Picture Association jumped in to back Disney up; the MPA represents not only the Mickey Mouse company, but Netflix, Paramount Skydance, Sony, Universal, Warner Bros., and Discovery.

“In a single day, the Chinese AI service Seedance 2.0 has engaged in unauthorized use of U.S. copyrighted works on a massive scale,” MPA chairman Charles Rivkin said in the statement.

Rivkin said the “infringement” affects “millions of American jobs” by disregarding the well-established copyright laws that are already on the books.

The Human Artistry Campaign — which represents groups like SAG-AFTRA and the Directors Guild of America — also chimed in and said that Seedance 2.0 was attacking every creator around the world.

“Stealing human creators’ work in an attempt to replace them with AI generated slop is destructive to our culture: stealing isn’t innovation,” the group said in a statement.

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For reasons unknown, the AI video generator became popular very quickly with those looking to recreate Hollywood-tier fight scenes with some of their favorite comic book characters, like Superman and the Incredible Hulk.

However, other fight scenes included bringing cartoons like “Dragon Ball Z” to life, while others featured rooftop fisticuffs between celebrities like Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt.

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