Scoop: Disney sends cease and desist letter to ByteDance over Seedance 2.0
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The Walt Disney Company on Friday sent a cease-and-desist letter to ByteDance, alleging the Chinese tech giant has been infringing on its works to train and develop an AI video generation model without compensation, according to a copy of the letter obtained by Axios.
Why it matters: It's the most serious action a Hollywood studio has taken so far against ByteDance since it launched Seedance 2.0 on Thursday.
Zoom in: The letter, addressed to ByteDance global general counsel John Rogovin, accuses ByteDance of pre-packaging its Seedance service "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."
- "Over Disney's well-publicized objections, ByteDance is hijacking Disney's characters by reproducing, distributing, and creating derivative works featuring those characters. ByteDance's virtual smash-and-grab of Disney's IP is willful, pervasive, and totally unacceptable," Disney's outside attorney David Singer wrote.
- "We believe this is just the tip of the iceberg – which is shocking considering Seedance has only been available for a few days," he added.
Between the lines: The letter includes a slew of examples of infringing Seedance videos that feature Disney's copyrighted characters, including Spider-Man, Darth Vader, Star Wars' Grogu (Baby Yoda), Peter Griffin from Family Guy and others.
- Disney points to examples of users distributing those videos publicly on social media to showcase how widespread the infringement has become.
- The company also alleges Seedance has infringed on Disney's copyrighted materials to benefit its commercial service without permission.
Zoom out: Hollywood has been quick to denounce ByteDance and Seedance 2.0 for infringing on studio and talent rights broadly.
- On Thursday, Motion Picture Association chairman and CEO Charles Rivkin issued a statement calling on ByteDance to "immediately cease its infringing activity."
- The Human Artistry Campaign, a coalition that includes dozens of creative groups including SAG-AFTRA and the Directors Guild of America, on Friday said, "Authorities should use every legal tool at their disposal to stop this wholesale theft."
The big picture: Disney has been aggressive in defending its intellectual property from theft by AI companies, and its actions have yielded some positive results.
- In September, the company sent a cease and desist letter to Character.AI alleging copyright infringement and Character.AI made changes to the way it used Disney's intellectual property in response.
- Disney sent a cease-and-desist letter to Google in December alleging copyright infringement, and shortly after it was reported that Google removed dozens of AI-generated videos depicting Disney characters without permission.
- Last June, Disney — alongside NBCUniversal — became the first major studio to sue a generative AI company when it filed a complaint against Midjourney. It later teamed with NBCU and Warner Bros. Discovery to sue the Chinese AI firm MiniMax, alleging large-scale piracy of their respective studios' copyrighted works.
What to watch: Disney has made it clear that it's open to partnering with AI companies, on the right terms.
- The entertainment giant struck a comprehensive deal with OpenAI last year that made the company the first major content licensing partner on Sora, OpenAI's social video platform. As part of the deal, Disney agreed to make a $1 billion equity investment in OpenAI.
