Disney and Paramount send cease-and-desist letters to ByteDance

Disney Accuses ByteDance of Copyright ‘Smash-and-Grab’ in Cease-and-Desist Over Seedance AI Tool

The Walt Disney Company has sent a cease-and-desist letter to ByteDance, accusing the Chinese tech giant of unlawfully using its intellectual property to develop the Seedance 2.0 AI video generation tool. The letter, first reported by Axios on Friday, represents the most aggressive action by a Hollywood studio since ByteDance launched the tool on Thursday.axios

Disney’s external attorney David Singer wrote that ByteDance bundled its Seedance service “with a pirated library of Disney’s copyrighted characters from Star Wars, Marvel, and other Disney franchises, as if Disney’s coveted intellectual property were free public domain clip art”. The letter cited examples of Seedance videos featuring Spider-Man, Darth Vader, Baby Yoda (Grogu), and Peter Griffin from Family Guy. Singer called the alleged infringement a “virtual smash-and-grab of Disney’s IP” that is “willful, pervasive, and totally unacceptable”.engadget

Hollywood Unites Against Seedance

Paramount has joined Disney in taking legal action, sending its own cease-and-desist letter on Saturday. The studio accused ByteDance of “blatant infringement” involving characters from franchises including Star Trek, South Park, Dora the Explorer, and The Godfather. The Motion Picture Association also condemned the platform, with CEO Charles Rivkin stating that “in a single day, the Chinese AI service Seedance 2.0 has engaged in unauthorized use of U.S. copyrighted works on a massive scale”.abcnews

ByteDance responded on Sunday, stating it “respects intellectual property rights” and is “taking steps to strengthen current safeguards as we work to prevent the unauthorized use of intellectual property and likeness by users”.scmp

A Tale of Two AI Strategies

Disney’s aggressive stance against ByteDance contrasts with its approach to OpenAI. In December, Disney signed a three-year licensing deal and invested $1 billion in OpenAI, allowing users of the Sora AI video platform to create content featuring more than 200 Disney, Marvel, Pixar, and Star Wars characters.romanolaw

The company has established a pattern of vigorously defending its IP against AI platforms. In September, Disney sent a cease-and-desist to Character.AI, leading to changes in how that platform used Disney content. In December, it targeted Google over its Nano Banana and Gemini AI tools. Last June, Disney and NBCUniversal filed a copyright lawsuit against Midjourney, calling the AI image generator a “bottomless pit of plagiarism”.deadline

“We suspect this is merely the beginning—which is alarming considering Seedance has only been operational for a few days,” Singer wrote.axios