Disney takes action against ByteDance’s Seedance 2.0 over alleged IP violations

United States – The Walt Disney Company has sent a cease-and-desist letter to ByteDance, alleging that the tech firm infringed on its copyrighted works to train and develop an AI video generation model without compensation, according to Axios.

The move marks the most serious action a Hollywood studio has taken so far against ByteDance since it launched its AI video model, Seedance 2.0, on Thursday, Axios reported.

The letter, addressed to ByteDance global general counsel John Rogovin, accuses the company of pre-packaging 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.”

“Over Disney’s well-publicised objections, ByteDance is hijacking Disney’s characters by reproducing, distributing, and creating derivative works featuring those characters. ByteDance’s virtual smash-and-grab of Disney’s IP is willful, pervasive, and totally unacceptable,” Disney’s outside attorney David Singer wrote.

“We believe this is just the tip of the iceberg – which is shocking considering Seedance has only been available for a few days,” he added.

According to the report, the letter includes several examples of allegedly infringing Seedance-generated videos featuring Disney-owned characters such as Spider-Man, Darth Vader, Grogu (also known as Baby Yoda) from Star Wars, and Peter Griffin from Family Guy, among others.

Disney also cited instances of users publicly distributing such videos on social media platforms to illustrate what it described as the scale of the alleged infringement.

The company further alleged that Seedance had used Disney’s copyrighted materials without authorisation to benefit its commercial service.

The Walt Disney Company has confirmed to MARKETECH APAC regarding the cease-and-desist letter they have sent, but have declined to comment further on the subject.

It is worth noting that Walt Disney Company has previously reached a landmark three-year licensing agreement with OpenAI that will bring characters from across Disney’s portfolio to Sora, OpenAI’s short-form generative AI video platform.

Under said agreement, Sora will be able to generate short, user-prompted social videos featuring more than 200 characters from Disney, Pixar, Marvel, and Star Wars, alongside related costumes, props, vehicles and iconic environments.