AI-generated video of Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt sparks copyright controversy
An AI-generated video depicting Hollywood actors Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt fighting was distributed by Cidnse, owned by ByteDance. The Motion Picture Association of America condemned the distribution as widespread copyright infringement and called for the service to cease its infringing activity.
What happened
A video generated with AI by Cidnse, owned by ByteDance, depicted Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt fighting on a rooftop.
The Motion Picture Association of America condemned Cidnse on Thursday for widespread copyright infringement through the distribution of this video.
The video displays what ByteDance called a 'significant leap in production quality' compared to a previous version, and other AI-generated videos from Cidnse depicting "Spider-Man", "Titanic", "Stranger Things", "Lord of the Rings", "Shrek" and other works are online.
Reported impact
The Motion Picture Association stated that ByteDance operates a service without meaningful safeguards against copyright infringement and disregards millions of American jobs.
The association demanded that ByteDance rapidly cease the infringing activity.
Index analysis
This incident follows the Motion Picture Association's similar criticism of OpenAI's release of Sora 2 in the previous autumn, which was created using AI.
OpenAI responded to those concerns by implementing measures that made it difficult for users to infringe studio copyrights, and Disney ultimately licensed 200 characters for use in Sora 2.
Governance controls
The status of whether ByteDance will adopt the approach taken by OpenAI remains unclear, or whether opponents will be forced to pursue copyright infringement lawsuits.
Classification
Sources and evidence
This record was researched and written by the Index, based on the following original reporting.