Paramount, Disney Target ByteDance AI With Cease-and-Desist

Major Hollywood studios Paramount and Disney have issued cease-and-desist letters to ByteDance, the Chinese company behind TikTok, accusing it of infringing copyrights through its new artificial intelligence tools Seedance and Seedream. The actions, reported this week, target the tools' use of protected characters and franchises to generate images and videos without permission, escalating tensions in the entertainment industry over generative AI.

Paramount, recently merged with Skydance Media, sent its letter to ByteDance CEO Liang Rubo, demanding an immediate halt to the use of its intellectual property in training the AI models or producing content. The letter, viewed by multiple outlets, states that the tools routinely create depictions of Paramount's franchises, including South Park, SpongeBob SquarePants, Star Trek, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The Godfather, Dora the Explorer, and Avatar: The Last Airbender. "It is self-evident that our company’s intellectual property was used to train the models that underlie these tools," the letter asserts. "Such training was also done without our consent and is a violation of the law." Paramount insists that ByteDance prevent future...