Disney's legal department takes action to sue Seedance 2.0 for using Marvel and Star Wars characters to train AI models
According to a letter obtained by Axios, The Walt Disney Company sent a letter to ByteDance on Friday local time, accusing the latter of using Disney works without permission while training and developing the Seedance 2.0 model, demanding that ByteDance "stop the infringement and not commit it again".
The letter was written by Disney lawyer David Singer, addressed to ByteDance's global general counsel John Rogovin. Disney accused ByteDance's Seedance service of having a "preset" pirated material library containing Disney copyrighted characters, involving multiple IPs such as Star Wars and Marvel, and claimed that their actions suggested that these highly commercialized IPs were "free public domain clip art".
Disney further stated that despite its public opposition, ByteDance continued to "hijack" Disney characters by copying, distributing, and creating derivative works, describing this behavior as "virtual looting" and calling it "deliberate, widespread, and completely unacceptable".
David Singer also emphasized in the letter that the infringement on Seedance may just be the "tip of the iceberg," and the reason this judgment is shocking is that Seedance has only been online for just two days.
To substantiate the infringement allegations, Disney listed several examples in the letter, stating that videos generated by Seedance featured several Disney copyrighted characters, including Marvel's Spider-Man, Star Wars' Darth Vader, and Peter Griffin from Family Guy.
Disney also pointed out that these videos were publicly posted by users on social media, indicating that the infringement dissemination has reached a considerable scale. Disney further accused Seedance of profiting from these unauthorized copyrighted contents as a commercial service.