‘It’s over for us’: Launch of new AI video generator Seedance 2.0 scares Hollywood | film

“It’s probably over for us,” a senior Hollywood figure has warned, after watching a widely shared AI-generated clip showing Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt fighting.

Rhett Reese, co-creator of Deadpool & Wolverine, Zombieland and Now You See Me: Now You Don’t, was reacting to a 15-second video showing Cruise and Pitt being punched on a bridge filled with rubble, posted by Irish director Ruairi Robinson, the director of the 2013 sci-fi horror film The Last Days on Mars. Reposting the clip on social media, Reese wrote: “I hate to say it. It’s probably over for us.”

He added: “In a very short time, one person will be able to sit down in front of a computer and create a movie that is indistinguishable from what Hollywood is releasing now. True, if that person is not good, it will be bad. But if that person has the talent and taste of Christopher Nolan (and someone like him will quickly emerge), it will be huge.”

Robinson said the clip resulted from a “two-line prompt in Seedance 2,” referring to the AI ​​video generator Seedance 2.0, which ByteDance, TikTok’s co-owner, released on Thursday.

The Motion Picture Association (MPA), Hollywood’s trade association, accused ByteDance of “large-scale unauthorized use of US copyrighted works.”

AI systems, such as chatbots, image generators, and video making tools, are trained on data from the open web, including copyrighted material such as novels, clips, and films. This has led to artists and creative industries demanding compensation for the use of their material and creating licensing frameworks to enable the legal use of their content. Amid lawsuits related to those disputes, some creative companies like Disney are signing deals with AI companies including OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT.

“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,” MPA President and CEO Charles Rifkin said, calling on ByteDance to “cease its infringing activity.”

Biban Kidron, a peer in the UK and a prominent campaigner against watering down copyright law, said AI companies should strike deals with creative industries.

“This is the latest in a long line of copyright infringements, but frankly from my conversations with both sides I think there is a will between AI companies and the creative industry to make a deal,” said Kidron, who has also worked in Hollywood as a film director. “It seems to me that the AI ​​sector needs to come to the negotiating table with a ‘real offer’ that satisfies the creative industries. Otherwise we will face a decade of litigation and the destruction of the industry that depends on it.”

ByteDance has been contacted for comment.