Chinese company ByteDance, creator of TikTok, has suspended the global rollout of its latest video generation model, Seedance 2.0, following a series of copyright disputes with major Hollywood studios and streaming platforms.
ByteDance said last month it would take steps to prevent unauthorized use of intellectual property in its Seedance 2.0 AI video generator, following threats of legal action from US studios including Disney.
Disney sent a cease and desist letter to the Chinese company last month, accusing it of using Disney characters to train and feed Seedance 2.0 without permission after videos generated by the model went viral in China, including one of Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt in a fight.
Disney said ByteDance had pre-packaged Seedance with a pirated library of copyrighted characters from franchises such as Star Wars and Marvel, depicting them as public domain clip art.
ByteDance, which officially presented the model in February, said the system is aimed at professional use in films, e-commerce and advertising, highlighting its ability to process text, images, audio and video all at once to reduce content production costs.
Seedance 2.0 has drawn attention after drawing comparisons to DeepSeek, a Chinese AI company that has created models that rival those of Anthropic and OpenAI. Tech executives including Elon Musk have praised its ability to generate cinematic stories from a handful of instructions.
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ByteDance intended to make the new video model available to customers worldwide in mid-March, but the company has since suspended those plans, according to text from The Information.
ByteDance’s legal team is working to identify and resolve potential legal issues, and engineers are adding safeguards to prevent the model from generating content that could lead to other intellectual property violations, the text added.
(Reporting by Bipasha Dey in Bengaluru)
