Other videos generated by the AI tool show Star Wars characters battling with lightsabers and Spider-Man and Captain America fighting each other
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NEED TO KNOW
- AI-generated videos showing Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt fighting each other have gone viral on social media
- The videos were created using the latest version of the Seedance tool
- The Motion Picture Association has demanded that Seedance “immediately cease its infringing activity”
Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise's likenesses are at the center of the latest controversial use of AI in the film industry.
The AI video tool Seedance and its parent company ByteDance (which also owns TikTok outside of the United States) have received significant scrutiny from Hollywood studios and SAG-AFTRA in recent days after a video showing AI-generated versions of Pitt, 62, and Cruise, 63, in intense hand-to-hand combat against each other went viral on Feb. 10.
The clip was shared to X by Irish filmmaker Ruairi Robinson. "This was a 2 line prompt in seedance 2. If the hollywood is cooked guys are right maybe the hollywood is cooked guys are cooked too idk," he wrote alongside his post. Robinson, who was nominated for Best Animated Short Film at the 2002 Oscars, also posted variations of the video that show an AI-generated Pitt and Cruise each fighting a zombie ninja, the pair teaming up to fight a robot, and a variation on the original video that features the two men discussing Jeffrey Epstein.
Neither Pitt, nor Cruise, have commented on the viral AI-generated video. In response to the videos and other AI-generated content created using the latest version of the Seedance tool, Disney sent a cease and desist letter to ByteDance on Friday, Feb. 13 alleging infringement of its IP according to The Hollywood Reporter and the BBC. As the BBC reported on Feb. 16, other videos generated by Seedance shared on the internet have shown Star Wars characters battling with lightsabers and Spider-Man and Captain America fighting each other as well.
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The Motion Picture Association, which represents Hollywood movie studios, also demanded that Seedance "immediately cease” what the MPA alleged was “its infringing activity," per THR. On Monday, Feb. 16, ByteDance told the BBC that it "respects intellectual property rights and we have heard the concerns regarding Seedance 2.0."
"We are taking steps to strengthen current safeguards as we work to prevent the unauthorized use of intellectual property and likeness by users," the company added in its statement. As the BBC noted, ByteDance had already paused the ability for Seedance users to upload images of real people for AI-generated content.
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The Screen Actors Guild said in a Feb. 13 statement that it "stands with the studios in condemning the blatant infringement enabled by Bytedance's new AI video model Seedance 2.0."
"The infringement includes the unauthorized use of our members' voices and likenesses. This is unacceptable and undercuts the ability of human talent to earn a livelihood," the actors' guild added in its statement. It further claimed, "Seedance 2.0 disregards law, ethics, industry standards and basic principles of consent. Responsible AI development demands responsibility, and that is nonexistent here."
The real-life Cruise will next appear on the big screen in his upcoming movie Digger, in theaters Oct. 2. Pitt, meanwhile, will star in David Fincher and Quentin Tarantino's spinoff of Pitt's 2019 movie Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood, which debuts on Netflix later this year.
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