Seedance 2.0, a new AI video generation model from TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance, has been widely used to create realistic, cinematic videos depicting Hollywood actors and characters, leading to copyright infringement claims.
ByteDance released Seedance 2.0 on Thursday, and the video, created primarily by Chinese users, quickly gained attention on both Chinese and Western social media for its highly realistic video and audio.
According to ByteDance, the system was designed to enable “director-level control” of film, advertising, and game animation by simultaneously generating text, images, audio, and video.
The following clip from Seadance 2.0, in which actors Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt play characters involved in a fist fight, has been particularly viral, to which American screenwriter Rhett Reese responded: “I don’t want to say it. I think it’s over.”
This was a two-line prompt in Seadance 2. If Hollywood is cooked, then maybe everyone is right. If Hollywood is cooked, everyone is overcooked. pic.twitter.com/dNTyLUIwAV
— Ruairi Robinson (@RuairiRobinson) February 11, 2026
Other videos generated by Seedance 2.0 showed actor Bryan Cranston, who plays Walter White in the TV series breaking badalso includes scenes depicting Spider-Man and other American actors such as Will Smith, Tom Hanks, Chris Evans, and Anne Hathaway.
Professor Kimberley Weatherall, co-director of the Center for AI, Trust and Governance at the University of Sydney, said the Seadance 2.0 videos were short, at 15 seconds long, but “very impressive” and highlighted the “significant progress” AI companies have made in AI-generated video.
“The visuals, sound and fluency are impressive,” Weatherall said. information age.
“Are they similar to copyright material? Yes, Spider-Man looks like Spider-Man and Mario looks like Mario.
“Do they resemble recognizable individuals? Yes, that fight video resembles Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise. It’s not perfect, but it’s recognizable.”
“…the video is probably too short in story line, story, or plotline to infringe on copyright, but characters such as Spider-Man and Mario in particular are based on the underlying artistic work.”
Seedance 2.0 is really crazy. Completed @chatcutapp pic.twitter.com/xk8xcBw6da
— Emu (@NotAnActualEmu) February 11, 2026
Hollywood denounces ‘massive abuse’
Paramount and Disney reportedly sent cease-and-desist requests to ByteDance this week due to videos generated by Seedance 2.0.
The company and its new video model have also drawn criticism from the Motion Picture Association of America (MPA), which represents major U.S. movie studios.
MPA Chairman and CEO Charles Rivkin said ByteDance and its Seadance service “engaged in large-scale misappropriation of U.S. copyrighted works.”
“By launching its service without meaningful protections against copyright infringement, ByteDance is ignoring established copyright laws that protect the rights of creators and support millions of American jobs,” he said in a statement Friday.
“ByteDance should immediately cease its infringing activities.”
The impact of AI models such as SeaDance 2.0 has raised concerns about whether actors, celebrities and even private citizens can effectively raise “legitimate concerns about the production of videos that look very similar to them”, Professor Weatherall said.
“That’s where I think we should be careful, because while I understand the commercial harm Disney and other commercial players could potentially face, the more concerning issue for me is the personal, moral and emotional harm that can occur when real, identifiable people are imitated by these videos,” she said.
OK, here it is: “Will Smith Eating Spaghetti” by Seedance 2.0. pic.twitter.com/ZOo3e9HFRI
— Carlos Santana (@DotCSV) February 10, 2026
SAG-AFTRA, the union formed through the merger of the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, said it condemned “obvious violations” in SeaDance 2.0, including the “misappropriation of members’ voices and likenesses.”
“This is unacceptable and undermines our people’s ability to earn a living,” the union said in a statement.
“Seedance 2.0 ignores the fundamental principles of law, ethics, industry standards, and consent.
“Responsible AI development requires accountability, and that doesn’t exist here.”
ByteDance said it ‘heard the concerns’
ByteDance on Monday pledged to crack down on intellectual property abuse in SeaDance 2.0, but did not respond to questions about whether copyrighted intellectual property was used to train the models.
A ByteDance spokesperson said: information age The company respects intellectual property rights and has “heard your concerns regarding Seedance 2.0.”
“We are taking steps to strengthen our current safeguards to prevent unauthorized use of our intellectual property and likeness by our users,” they said.
ByteDance says it “respects intellectual property rights” and “hears concerns about SeaDance 2.0.” Image: ByteDance
At the time of writing, Seedance 2.0 is available in ByteDance’s video editor JianYing (branded as CapCut outside of China) for users with user IDs from China’s Douyin app (TikTok in the West).
ByteDance reportedly said it plans to bring Seedance 2.0 to CapCut for users around the world, but it is not yet available.
Developers outside of China may be able to access Seedance 2.0 through some third-party API providers.
ByteDance acknowledged in the release of Seedance 2.0 that the model is “still far from perfect, with various flaws remaining in the results it produces.”
“We will continue to explore deep collaboration between large-scale models and human feedback, striving to provide more efficient, stable and imaginative audio-video production tools and serve more creators,” the company said.
Seedance 2.0’s rapid rise has already led to comparisons with China’s DeepSeek R1 chatbot. The DeepSeek R1 chatbot skyrocketed in popularity in 2025 and has since become the most blocked AI in Australia due to potential security issues.
Western AI models also face copyright issues
Many Western AI models have previously been accused of being trained on or allowing the generation of intellectual property, such as photos, books, music, TV shows, movies, YouTube videos, and software code.
Google launched an “early research prototype” world generation model called Project Genie in January that allows users to build video game-like environments that appear to mimic copyrighted Nintendo games.
Elon Musk’s xAI’s Grok series of AI models has been accused of allowing the generation of copyrighted characters, and Meta has been accused of using a pirated book dataset to train its Llama AI model.
Disney signed a licensing agreement with ChatGPT maker OpenAI in December 2025, allowing the American AI company to use more than 200 characters from the Disney, Marvel, Pixar, and Star Wars series in its video generator Sora.
Around the same time, Disney reportedly sent a cease-and-desist letter to Google’s lawyers, accusing the tech giant of “massive” copyright infringement involving Disney property.
Google, Meta and others are reportedly pursuing licensing deals with film and TV studios, but details of successful deals have not been publicly shared.
