Disney battles ByteDance over Seedance AI copyright issues

Disney sent a cease-and-desist to ByteDance after the company’s Seedance 2.0 model produced AI versions of Disney characters, even as it took a different approach when OpenAI’s Sora did something similar. One viral clip—an AI-made Wolverine-versus-Thanos sequence created with Seedance 2.0—garnered over 142,000 views on X in 48 hours, and the tool also produced a hyperrealistic Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt fight.

In its letter, Disney accused ByteDance of supplying Seedance 2.0 with "a pirated library of Disney's copyrighted characters... as if Disney's coveted intellectual property were free public domain clip art," and warned that "ByteDance is hijacking Disney's characters by reproducing, distributing, and creating derivative works featuring those characters." This dispute follows other moves by Disney to protect its properties: Disney and NBCUniversal sued Midjourney last year, comparing its tech to "a virtual vending machine, generating endless unauthorized copies" of their copyrighted works.

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