In a new AI video, Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise battle it out on a rooftop in a cinematic action scene.
This isn’t a trailer for a new blockbuster, and while they look similar, it’s not actually Pitt and Cruise. In fact, this video is so realistic that the most obvious sign that it was created by AI is the dialogue.
“You killed Jeffrey Epstein, you beast! He was a good man!” Pitt says as he punches Cruz.
“He knew too much…” Cruise replies.
It’s easy to see why Hollywood’s most prominent trade association isn’t happy about this.
The scene was created using Seedance 2.0, a new AI video generation model released Thursday by TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance.
The tool, and the hyper-realistic videos users create of Hollywood actors and characters, went viral in China and is now catching the attention of Americans.
“It’s moving fast,” Elon Musk said in response to a video generated using SeaDance and posted on X, referring to the speed of advances in artificial intelligence.
Another X user said, “I’m done cooking.”
The American reaction is reminiscent of the buzz surrounding DeepSeek, a Chinese company that unveiled an AI inference model that rivals OpenAI’s ChatGPT and other top models last January, stunning Silicon Valley heavyweights and intensifying competition between the U.S. and China for AI innovation supremacy.
Seedance 2.0 is another shot in the arm for the American AI company. Its multimodal capabilities span text, image, audio, and video inputs, allowing creators to control metrics such as lighting, shadows, and camera movement.
In another viral scene, a deepfake version of Breaking Bad star Walter White points directly at viewers and says, “You think you’re in control.” This line is more like a provocation than a dialogue.
Creepy depictions of Hollywood actors as well as characters from The Avengers and other major film series quickly raised copyright concerns.
The Motion Picture Association of America, an industry group representing major Hollywood studios and streaming services, issued a statement Thursday accusing ByteDance of committing “massive” rights violations in “a single day.”
“By launching its service without meaningful protections against copyright infringement, ByteDance is ignoring established copyright law that protects the rights of creators and supports millions of American jobs. ByteDance must immediately cease its infringing activities,” MPA Chairman and CEO Charlie Rivkin said in a statement.
OpenAI’s AI video generation tool “Sora” can also create AI versions of actors and characters, but copyright issues have also been raised.
But like many modern tools in AI, it can be difficult to put the genie back in the bottle.
