Disney has issued a cease-and-desist letter to a Chinese company, accusing it of using its characters to train and enhance tools without permission.
issued Monday, February 16, 2026 · 03:00 PM
[BEIJING] Following threats of lawsuits from Disney and other US studios, Chinese tech company ByteDance announced on Monday (February 16) that it will take steps to prevent unauthorized use of its intellectual property in its artificial intelligence (AI) video generator SeaDance 2.0.
Videos generated by Seadance 2.0 released last week went viral in China, including a video of Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt fighting.
The AI model has been compared to DeepSeek and praised for its ability to generate cinematic stories with just a few prompts.
Disney sent a cease-and-desist letter to ByteDance, accusing the company of using its characters to train and enhance SeaDance 2.0 without permission, people familiar with the matter told Reuters late on Sunday.
The studio said ByteDance pre-packaged Seedance with a pirated library of copyrighted characters from franchises such as Star Wars and Marvel and depicted them as if they were public domain clip art.
The letter alleges that the company reproduces, distributes and creates derivative works featuring Spider-Man, Darth Vader and other characters, the sources added.
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“We are taking steps to strengthen our current safeguards to prevent unauthorized use of our intellectual property and likeness by our users,” ByteDance said in a statement.
He did not elaborate on the measures being taken.
Online news agency Axios first reported Disney’s move.
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Paramount Skydance also sent a cease-and-desist letter to ByteDance, accusing the Chinese company of engaging in “blatant infringement” of its intellectual property. variety It was reported over the weekend.
Disney has taken similar action against Character.AI, demanding that it immediately stop any unauthorized use of its copyrighted characters.
In December, the company signed a licensing agreement with OpenAI to allow its Sora video generator to use characters from Star Wars, Pixar, and Marvel series. Reuters
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