Warner Bros. has become the latest studio to criticize ByteDance for its AI video generation platform Seedance 2.0, which has been used to create videos featuring DC superheroes such as Superman and Batman, as well as characters from “Game of Thrones” using the likenesses of actors from the HBO series.
“[T]”Users are not the root cause of infringement. Since SeedDance is preloaded with Warner Bros. Discovery’s copyrighted characters, they are simply building on the foundation of infringement already laid by ByteDance,” Warner Bros. Vice President of Legal Affairs Wayne Smith said in a letter to the Chinese company. It was an intentional design choice by ByteDance. ”
Mr. Smith also called directly John Rogovin, ByteDance’s general counsel, who previously held the same position at Warner Bros.
“ByteDance is now engaged in a blatant violation of the very same assets you have spent years protecting,” Smith wrote.
Warner Bros., along with Disney and Paramount, has written a cease-and-desist letter to ByteDance, demanding that it put guardrails in place to prevent users from producing videos using its IP. The Motion Picture Association of Japan and SAG-AFTRA have also condemned the misuse of IP, and the Actors Guild has said its members’ portraits have been copied without their consent.
In his letter, Warner acknowledged that ByteDance had responded to cease-and-desist letters from other studios and promised to add safeguards, but criticized the company for not doing so before releasing Seadance 2.0 to the public.
“While this is a promising sign that this dispute may be resolved in a corporate dispute, it still begs the question why guardrails that could be implemented so quickly and easily did not exist at the time of Seadance’s release,” the letter states.
It will continue…
