Rapid response after nearly identical artificial intelligence videos of stars went viral on social media
Paramount Skydance is the latest studio to send a cease-and-desist letter to ByteDance over its tools SeaDance and SeaDream, citing “blatant infringement” of intellectual property.
The studio’s head of intellectual property, Gabriel Miller, wrote a letter to the Chinese internet giant’s CEO Liang Lebo.
“Much of the content produced by the Seed Platform includes vivid depictions of Paramount’s well-known and iconic franchises and characters, and is protected by copyright, trademark, and unfair competition laws (among other things),” he wrote in the letter.
Miller continued: “The AI-generated image and video content produced by ByteDance’s platform is often visually and audibly indistinguishable from Paramount’s copyrighted characters and stories.”
In the end, the studio’s executives demand that “ByteDance immediately take all necessary steps to (i) prevent intellectual property infringement by ensuring that no further use or creation of our content is made by ByteDance or the Seed Platform, and (ii) remove all infringing instances of Paramount’s content from ByteDance’s platforms and systems.”
Paramount is not the first studio to be issued a cease-and-desist letter after ByteDance’s AI tools set off alarm bells in Hollywood. Disney recently sent a similar memo to Chinese companies.
