Warner Bros. Condemns ByteDance AI Videos of DC Superheroes, ‘Game of Thrones’: ‘Blatant Infringement’

Warner Bros. has become the latest studio to condemn ByteDance for allowing unauthorized use of its IP on its AI video generating platform Seedance 2.0, which has been used to create videos featuring DC superheroes like Superman and Batman as well as characters from “Game of Thrones” with the likenesses of actors from the HBO series.

“[T]he users are not the ones at the root cause of the infringement,” Wayne Smith, EVP of legal at Warner Bros., wrote in a letter to the Chinese company. “They are merely building on the foundation of infringement already laid by ByteDance as Seedance comes pre-loaded with Warner Bros. Discovery’s copyrighted characters. That was a deliberate design choice by ByteDance.”

Smith also directly called out ByteDance’s general counsel, John Rogovin, who used to work in the same position at Warner Bros.

“ByteDance is now engaged in blatant infringement of the very same properties you spent many years protecting,” Smith wrote.

Warner Bros. joins Disney and Paramount in writing cease-and-desist letters to ByteDance demanding that the company implement guardrails to prevent users from generating videos with its IP. The Motion Picture Association and SAG-AFTRA have also condemned the unauthorized use of the IP, with the actors union noting that the likenesses of its members are being replicated without their consent.

In the letter, Warner acknowledged that ByteDance has responded to the cease-and-desist letters from other studios and has pledged to add safeguards, but still criticized the company for not doing so before Seedance 2.0 rolled out to the public.

“While this is a promising indication that we may resolve this dispute business to business, it nonetheless begs the question why guardrails that can so quickly and easily be implemented were not present upon Seedance’s release,” the letter states.

More to come…

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