Paramount Skydance has change into the newest main Hollywood studio to accuse ByteDance of illegally exploiting copyrighted materials to coach and energy its synthetic intelligence instruments, escalating an industrywide backlash towards generative AI fashions tied to the Chinese language tech large.
In a cease-and-desist letter seen by TheWrap and despatched to ByteDance Chief Govt Liang Rubo, attorneys for Paramount demanded that the corporate instantly halt any use of Paramount-owned content material in its AI methods and take away allegedly infringing materials from its platforms.
“It’s self-evident that our firm’s mental property was used to coach the fashions that underlie these instruments. Such coaching was additionally carried out with out our consent and is a violation of the regulation,” the letter states. It insists that Paramount content material is just not used to coach or generate materials by ByteDance’s Seed platforms and that any infringing outcomes generated on the corporate’s methods be taken down.
The letter targets ByteDance’s Seedance and Seedream instruments, which the corporate markets as image- and video-generation merchandise that create content material in response to consumer prompts. Paramount alleges that the instruments routinely produce imagery and video carefully resembling the studio’s well-known franchises and characters.
In response to the letter, the allegedly infringed properties embody South Park, SpongeBob SquarePants, Star Trek, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The Godfather, Dora the Explorer and Avatar: The Final Airbender. The studio additionally asserted that its mental property was used with out permission to coach the underlying AI fashions.
Paramount stated it objects to the usage of its protected works each as coaching materials and as outputs generated by the fashions with out specific authorization.
The transfer follows an analogous motion by Disney, which despatched ByteDance a cease-and-desist letter on Friday alleging infringement of a variety of properties, together with Star Wars, Marvel titles and Household Man.
The studios’ complaints come amid rising concern in Hollywood over the fast development of generative AI instruments able to producing high-quality video, significantly with the latest rollout of Seedance 2.0. The Movement Image Affiliation and the Human Artistry Marketing campaign issued statements final week criticizing ByteDance and warning that unauthorized use of copyrighted works to coach AI methods threatens artistic industries.
ByteDance has not publicly responded to the Paramount letter. The dispute provides to mounting authorized and regulatory stress on AI builders as leisure corporations push to guard their mental property within the face of more and more subtle generative applied sciences.
