Hollywood is not happy with the new Seedance 2.0 video generator

Hollywood organizations are opposing a new AI-powered video model called Seedance 2.0, which they say is quickly becoming a vehicle for “blatant” copyright infringement.

ByteDance, the Chinese company that recently completed a deal to sell TikTok’s U.S. operations (it retains a stake in the new joint venture), launched Seedance 2.0 earlier this week. According to the Wall Street Journal, the updated model is currently available to Chinese users of ByteDance’s Jianying app, and the company says it will soon be available to global users of its CapCut app.

Similar to tools like OpenAI’s Sora, Seedance allows users to create videos (currently limited to 15 seconds in length) by simply entering a text prompt. Like Sora, Seedance quickly attracted criticism for its apparent lack of guardrails around the ability to create videos using images of real people, as well as the studios’ intellectual property.

After an

The Motion Picture Association quickly issued a statement from CEO Charles Rifkin demanding that ByteDance “immediately cease its infringing activity.”

“In one day, Chinese AI service Seedance 2.0 engaged in the unauthorized use of US copyrighted works on a large scale,” Rifkin said. “By launching a service that operates without meaningful safeguards against infringement, ByteDance is ignoring well-established copyright law that protects the rights of creators and supports millions of American jobs.”

The Human Art Campaign — an initiative backed by Hollywood unions and trade groups — condemned Seedance 2.0 as “an attack on very creative people around the world,” while actors union SAG-AFTRA said it “stands with the studios in condemning the blatant abuse enabled by Bytedance’s new AI video model Seedance 2.0.”

The Seedance videos appear to have featured Disney-owned characters like Spider-Man, Darth Vader, and Grogu, better known as Baby Yoda, prompting the company to take legal action. Axios reported that Disney sent a cease-and-desist letter accusing ByteDance of “appropriating Disney’s intellectual property” and alleging that the Chinese company is “hijacking Disney characters by reproducing, distributing, and creating derivative works featuring those characters.”

Disney isn’t necessarily opposed to working with AI companies, and while it has reportedly sent a cease-and-desist letter to Google over similar issues, it has signed a three-year licensing agreement with OpenAI.

TechCrunch has reached out to ByteDance for comment.