Hollywood fights back against super-realistic AI video tool

Paramount Skydance is the latest studio to send a cease-and-desist letter to ByteDance over its tools, Seedance and Seedream, for "blatant infringement" on its intellectual property.

Gabriel Miller, head of the studio's intellectual property, wrote the letter addressed to the Chinese internet giant's CEO, Liang Rubo.

In the letter, he writes that “much of the content that the Seed Platforms produce contains vivid depictions of Paramount’s famous and iconic franchises and characters, which are protected under copyright law, trademark law, and the law of unfair competition (among other doctrines).”

Miller continues, "The content in the AI-generated images and videos produced by ByteDance’s platforms is often indistinguishable, both visually and audibly, from Paramount’s copyrighted characters and stories."

In the end, the studio’s executive demands that “ByteDance immediately take all necessary steps to (i) prevent violations of our intellectual property rights by ensuring that our content is not used or created by ByteDance or the Seed Platforms going forward, and (ii) remove all infringing instances of Paramount’s content from ByteDance’s platforms and systems.”

Paramount is not the first studio to issue a cease-and-desist letter after ByteDance's AI tools set off alarm bells in Hollywood. Disney recently sent a similar note to the Chinese company.