Warner Bros. has turn into the newest studio to sentence ByteDance for permitting unauthorized use of its IP on its AI video producing platform Seedance 2.0, which has been used to create movies that includes DC superheroes like Superman and Batman in addition to characters from “Sport of Thrones” with the likenesses of actors from the HBO sequence.
“(T)he customers are usually not those on the root reason behind the infringement,” Wayne Smith, EVP of authorized at Warner Bros., wrote in a letter to the Chinese language firm. “They’re merely constructing on the muse of infringement already laid by ByteDance as Seedance comes pre-loaded with Warner Bros. Discovery’s copyrighted characters. That was a deliberate design alternative by ByteDance.”
Smith additionally immediately referred to as out ByteDance’s normal counsel, John Rogovin, who used to work in the identical place at Warner Bros.
“ByteDance is now engaged in blatant infringement of the exact same properties you spent a few years defending,” Smith wrote.
Warner Bros. joins Disney and Paramount in writing cease-and-desist letters to ByteDance demanding that the corporate implement guardrails to stop customers from producing movies with its IP. The Movement Image Affiliation and SAG-AFTRA have additionally condemned the unauthorized use of the IP, with the actors union noting that the likenesses of its members are being replicated with out their consent.
Within the letter, Warner acknowledged that ByteDance has responded to the cease-and-desist letters from different studios and has pledged so as to add safeguards, however nonetheless criticized the corporate for not doing so earlier than Seedance 2.0 rolled out to the general public.
“Whereas it is a promising indication that we might resolve this dispute enterprise to enterprise, it nonetheless begs the query why guardrails that may so rapidly and simply be carried out weren’t current upon Seedance’s launch,” the letter states.
