Seedance 2.0 Global Launch Cancelled, Here Is Why

ByteDance’s latest video generation AI tool Seedance 2.0 won’t be having a global launch anytime soon. The company, as The Information reports based on their couple of sources, is facing some legal issues from major film companies like Disney for using their copyrighted characters. Looks like we won’t be seeing any AI-slop making Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt fight in emotion- and quality-less videos.

The issue here is that the Chinese company is allegedly using a pirated library of copyrighted characters to provide users a toy that will vomit some celebrity-resembling vomit. We can’t say for sure which characters or faces are hiding in that library but we have seen a video featuring Spawn, a character from the comic book of the same name, apart from the Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise bit.

More AI generated slop includes a clip showing Lord of the Rings protagonists Frodo Baggins (Elijah Wood) and Samwise Gamgee (Sean Astin) devising a plan to drop the Ring inside Mount Doom using the Great Eagles of Middle Earth called Thorondor. Mount Doom goes boom in this clip, and LOTR becomes a 15-second story instead of a multiple-films-long saga. Some people also generated a video of Marvel character Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds in films) and LucasFilm character Darth Vader (Hayden Christensen) in a duel. It’s neither intense nor fun.

Paramount Skydance has taken similar actions against SeeDance 2.0, where the company’s CEO Gabriel Miller, mentioned that ByteDance’s pirated library includes properties like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, SpongeBob SquarePants, The Godfather, and more, Variety notes in a report.

To prevent all these unethical practices using their Ai-generation tool, A ByteDance spokesperson recently said that they are “taking steps.” But to no avail, it seems.

How Such Unethical Practices are Affecting Hollywood

Hollywood isn’t just a culmination of big names like Warner Bros., Disney, Paramount, and more, and they aren’t the only ones being threatened by AI. The actors, on whom such organizations depend, are too.

In one video from 2020 reviewed by Variety in 2023, they found that an AI video generation app used Scarlett Johansson’s face to generate an advertisement. That AI-slop has vanished from the internet since it was exposed. ScarJo and her team took legal action against it as soon as it came to light.

A similar incident includes the veteran actor Tom Hanks, who has also co-starred against Johansson in Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City. A dental plan featuring his AI-generated image was circulating on the internet and he warned he has “nothing to do with it” in a post on Instagram.

The issue arising from such unethical practices is that these companies or accounts get more engagement and credibility from the users who don’t usually understand at first if what they are seeing is an AI generated video. Actors charge for when they agree to act in an ad or a film, and AI is just snatching that away.

This AI-Hollywood War Isn’t New

Seedance is just the latest in the line, allowing an AI tool to puke over authenticity in the entertainment industry. Disney and Universal have sued Midjourney for its image generator, calling it a “bottomless pit of plagiarism.” The tool fed on famous characters like Despicable Me’s Minions, Star Wars’ Darth Vader, and Frozen’s Elsa.

Both the Hollywood giants came together in a case echoing the above while also being joined by Warner Bros. It was again a Chinese company called MiniMax, which was using the intellectual properties of these film production companies for content generation.

AI has made the lives of people and the content that appears on the internet a living hell. People can’t get jobs, and when they go over to scroll after a hectic day of a job search, they are exposed to Ai-slop generated by shameless people calling themselves creators.

Moves from companies like this at least give us a little hope that there’s still concern over quality left in Hollywood somewhere.