Sony Photos Leisure has joined in on Hollywood’s barrage of cease-and-desist letters towards ByteDance, which launched its AI video-generating software program Seedance 2.0 with the power to create footage with copyrighted characters from prime studios and their mental property.
“The mannequin generates outputs that carefully mimic SPE content material and/or incorporate well-known characters and different copyright-protected components of SPE works,” Sony EVP and common counsel Jill Ratner wrote. “Inside days of Seedance 2.0’s launch, infringing outputs reportedly generated by the mannequin had been disseminated at scale throughout social media platforms.”
Sony has joined Disney, Paramount, Netflix and Warner Bros. in demanding that ByteDance take away the power to provide and distribute AI-generated movies with their characters. The Movement Image Affiliation and SAG-AFTRA have additionally condemned the discharge of Seedance 2.0 with out correct copyright guardrails.
“We’re taking steps to strengthen present safeguards as we work to forestall the unauthorised use of mental property and likeness by customers,” ByteDance has mentioned in response to the wave of authorized backlash.
However that hasn’t been sufficient for the Hollywood studios, together with Sony, which claimed that ByteDance ought to by no means have launched Seedance 2.0 with out copyright guardrails in place.
“Whereas SPE is conscious of ByteDance’s current public statements relating to the belated implementation of guardrails, ByteDance’s deliberate choice to launch SeedDance 2.0 with out acceptable guardrails is telling,” the studio’s letter reads. “SPE is not going to tolerate delayed or half-baked measures.”
