MPA Sends Cease and Desist to ByteDance Over Seedance 2.0

Hollywood’s top studios aren’t satisfied with a promise from ByteDance on Feb. 16 to tamp down on unauthorized use of intellectual property on Seedance 2.0, as a new letter from the Motion Picture Association demonstrates.

The trade association sent a strongly-worded cease and desist letter to the Chinese tech giant on Friday alleging “systemic infringement” by the tool, The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed. It’s this first time the MPA has sent a cease-and-desist to a major generative AI company.

The letter, which is framed as a “collective industry response” to Seedance 2.0, argues that unauthorized use of IP by its videos isn’t an errant mistake, but rather is baked into the tech. “The scale and consistency of these results demonstrate systemic infringement rather than inadvertence. In other words, Seedance’s copyright infringement is a feature, not a bug,” the letter states. Variety earlier reported the missive.

The letter arrives about a week after the CEO of the MPA first cried foul over videos generated by Seedance 2.0 users that featured Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt as well as characters from Spider-Man, Transformers, Stranger Things and other iconic Hollywood properties. Charles Rivkin alleged that the generative AI tool had “engaged in unauthorized use of U.S. copyrighted works on a massive scale.” 

Since then, Netflix, Warner Bros., Disney, Paramount and Sony have sent their own legal threats to ByteDance. In its own cease and desist letter, Warner Bros. described the Chinese tech company as following a familiar playbook for generative AI tools: infringing on copyright for marketing purposes and then adding in guardrails once the legal threats roll in.

On Monday, amid the fracas, ByteDance told the BBC that the company “respects intellectual property rights” and was “taking steps to strengthen current safeguards as we work to prevent the unauthorized use of intellectual property and likeness by users.”

That’s not enough, the MPA said in its latest missive. “The harm to the MPA Member Studios is significant and ongoing. While we acknowledge ByteDance’s recent statements to the press… at this point we need far more than general statements,” the organization wrote. “Our ongoing investigation and review of social media platforms continues to reveal examples of Seedance producing material that clearly infringes on our members’ rights.”

The MPA also argued that, far from being a user-created problem, the use of intellectual property is the result of ByteDance’s actions. “It is ByteDance itself that trained its model on the MPA Member Studios’ works without their consent (a necessary first step toward its production of infringing output) and released its service without guardrails; and, by its own conduct, reproduced and distributed content that blatantly infringes the MPA Member Studios’ copyrights,” the letter stated.

Seedance 2.0 made waves almost as soon as it was rolled out on Feb. 12. An AI-generated video of Tom Cruise fighting Brad Pitt went viral, prompting apocalyptic predictions for Hollywood from social media users including Deadpool & Wolverine screenwriter Rhett Reese. “I hate to say it,” he wrote on the social platform X. “It’s likely over for us.”

But Hollywood has been mobilizing to take the video generator to task. In addition to studios, performers’ union SAG-AFTRA has spoken out about the tool and major talent agency CAA said it was talking directly with ByteDance to address Seedance 2.0’s “brazen disregard for creators’ rights.”