When a company releases a new AI model, it typically angers intellectual property owners and other groups who speak up on behalf of copyrights, causing a public uproar and, if possible, some legal action or warning.
OpenAI’s ChatGPT has been the subject of numerous lawsuits, most famously by the New York Times. Stability was sued by a consortium of UK image copyright owners, but almost lost. At the time of Sora 2’s release, OpenAI received a memo from Japan asking it to refrain from doing anything that appeared to be infringing on anime or manga copyrights. Suno and Udio were once targeted by music publishers on suspicion of copyright infringement. There are countless other examples, each with their own allegations and accusations.
Apparently it’s ByteDance’s turn next. The flashiest new AI model in recent weeks is ByteDance’s Seedance 2.0. It’s similar to Sora 2, except its videos aren’t embarrassing to watch.
Seedance 2.0 appears to be very versatile, but early viral prompts indicate that what users particularly like are its fake ads, which for some reason often feature someone who looks like Bob Odenkirk, and short 15-second John Wick movies, except that instead of John Wick in the teleprompter, you can insert Harry Potter, Thanos, Robocop, or whoever you want.
I’m not an expert or a lawyer myself, but this just seems to be the case, I’m not making any claims with certainty. someone is violating something.
But with that in mind, we’d like to congratulate ByteDance, TikTok’s original parent company, on the occasion of their viral AI model. The prize for this accomplishment is, in this case, a high-profile cease and desist letter from Disney.
The letter, seen by Axios and reported on Friday afternoon, states that Seadance 2.0 comes 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.” Characters named in the letter include Baby Yoda, Peter Griffin, Spider-Man, and Darth Vader.
A letter on behalf of Disney, attributed to an outside attorney named David Singer, asserts that “ByteDance is hijacking Disney characters by reproducing, distributing, and creating derivative works featuring those characters. ByteDance’s substantial usurpation of Disney’s intellectual property is intentional, pervasive, and totally unacceptable.”
Of course, Disney entered into a content partnership with OpenAI, not ByteDance, about two months ago. In other words, Disney IP is not free public domain clipart; very valuable and special Clip art. Under the terms of the agreement, OpenAI explained that Sora can be used to “draw from a set of over 200 animated, masked, and creature characters from Disney, Marvel, Pixar, and Star Wars to generate short user-prompted social videos that fans can watch and share.”
At the moment, judging from my own testing, this partnership has not yet been integrated into Sora products, as Disney characters appear to be blocked by the app. OpenAI’s page about the deal with Disney states that Disney’s implementation is scheduled for early 2026.
Disney isn’t the only company with such deals. For example, Universal Music Group settled a lawsuit against AI music generation company Udio last year, forging a music generation partnership in the process. A few weeks later, Warner Music Group did the same.
But the message that can be gleaned from these cancellations and lawsuits in the context of eventual deals with AI companies seems to be that companies are not all that willing to allow random internet users to freely use AI to generate content containing valuable intellectual property, without caring about artistic value. Looking at their actions, it seems that AI should be freely used by random internet users to generate content containing their valuable intellectual property, without regard for artistic value. As long as the copyright holders can get their beaks wet.
It’s unclear how legally OpenAI and Disney’s deal would fit with a hypothetical future partnership between Disney and ByteDance, but if contract law prevents such a thing, ByteDance would likely have to settle for a deal that would make SeaDance 2.0 the exclusive slop video generator for Universal-related intellectual property like Minions and the Fast and Furious movie universe.
