Kamal Ghorui
It took only a 15-second clip of Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt duking it out on a crumbling rooftop at twilight to draw swift outrage, and sizeable fear, from Hollywood over the last few days. The widely circulated video was created by Irish director Ruairi Robinson using Seedance 2.0, a powerful artificial intelligence video generation tool owned by Chinese technology company ByteDance. It had plenty of the bells and whistles of a big-budget Hollywood film: sweeping camera angles, stunt choreography, crisp sound effects and haunting music. With a two-sentence prompt and the click of a button, Seedance had produced a stunningly realistic result that was a drastic improvement over previously generated AI videos, often shoddy clips known as AI slop. This video was so convincing that it drew near immediate condemnation from some of Hollywood’s top organisations and companies. Rhett Reese, a scriptwriter known for his “Deadpool” films, said that the Cruise-Pitt video had sent a “cold shiver” up his spine. “For all of us who work in the industry and devoted our careers and lives to it, I just think it’s nothing short of terrifying,” he remarked. “I could just see it costing jobs all over the place.” ByteDance released Seedance 2.0 last week, nearly two months after a previous version had failed to prompt much anger. A news release from the company praised the updated tool’s “physical accuracy, realism and controllability,” which it said was suitable for the needs of “professional-grade creative scenarios.” Hollywood was swift to sit up straight. Charles Rivkin, the chair and CEO of the Motion Picture Association, called on ByteDance to “immediately cease its infringing activity,” saying in a statement that Seedance 2.0 had engaged in the unauthorised use of copyrighted works on a “massive scale.” Human Artistry Campaign, a global coalition that advocates using AI “with respect for the irreplaceable artists, performers and creatives,” said that unauthorised works generated by Seedance 2.0 violated the “most basic aspects of personal autonomy.” Disney, which in a watershed $1 billion deal last year agreed to allow OpenAI’s Sora users to generate video content with its characters, sent a cease-and-desist letter to ByteDance, accusing it of supplying Seedance with a “pirated library” of Disney’s characters – “as if Disney’s coveted intellectual property were free public-domain clip art.” ByteDance said it was aware of the concerns about Seedance. “We are taking steps to strengthen current safeguards as we work to prevent the unauthorised use of intellectual property and likeness by users,” it said. Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, the national executive director of Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, said its contracts had specific and enforceable rules about digital replication. According to Crabtree-Ireland, the real concern is that, even if videos generated by Seedance and other AI platforms “are not malicious in intent,” they could “violate someone’s right to control how their image and their voice is used
