OpenAI’s ChatGPT has been the target of several lawsuits – most famously from The New York Times. A lawsuit was filed in the UK by a consortium of image copyright holders over sustainability, which was largely unsuccessful. When Sora 2 was released OpenAI received a note from Japan asking it to avoid what it considered infringing anime and manga copyrights. Suno and Udio were once targets of music publishers over alleged copyright violations. There are countless other examples, each with their own allegations and accusations.
Now apparently it’s ByteDance’s turn. If you haven’t heard, the coolest new AI model of the last few weeks is ByteDance’s CDance 2.0, which is a bit like Sora 2, except the sloppy videos it creates are a little less embarrassing to watch.
SeeDance 2.0 appears to be quite versatile, but early viral indications suggest that users particularly like it for its fake commercials, often starring someone who for some reason shows Bob Odenkirk’s face, and what appear to be short 15-second John Wick movies, except that the prompter can insert anyone in place of John Wick, like (apparently) Harry Potter, or Thanos, or RoboCop.
As a non-expert and non-lawyer, this appears to be the case, and I am not claiming that with certainty. anyone violating anything.
But with that in mind, I want to congratulate ByteDance, the original parent company of TikTok, on the occasion of its viral AI model! The reward for this achievement is a high-profile cease-and-desist letter from Disney, in this case.
The letter, seen by Axios and reported Friday afternoon, says Seadance 2.0 “comes with a pirated library of Disney’s copyrighted characters from Star Wars, Marvel, and other Disney franchises, as if Disney’s iconic intellectual property were free public domain clip art.” Characters named in the letter include Baby Yoda, Peter Griffin, Spider-Man and Darth Vader.
The letter on behalf of Disney, quoting an outside attorney named David Singer, claims, “ByteDance is hijacking Disney characters by reproducing, distributing, and creating derivative works featuring those characters. ByteDance’s virtual subversion of Disney’s IP is deliberate, pervasive, and completely unacceptable.”
Of course, Disney entered into a content partnership with OpenAI about two months ago, not ByteDance, which means the Disney IP is not free public domain clip art, but highly prized and exclusive clip art. Under the terms of the agreement, OpenAI states that Sora will be used to create “short, user-driven social videos that can be viewed and shared by fans, drawing from a set of more than 200 animated, masked, and creature characters from Disney, Marvel, Pixar, and Star Wars.”
At the moment, judging by my own tests, this partnership has not yet been integrated into the Sora product, as Disney characters appear to be blocked by the app. OpenAI’s page about the Disney deal says that Disney implementation should be expected in early 2026.
Disney is not alone in making this kind of deal. For example, last year, Universal Music Group settled a lawsuit against AI music generator Udio and created a music-production partnership in the process. A few weeks later, Warner Music Group did the same.
But the message that can be taken from these cease-and-desist and lawsuits in terms of ultimate deals with AI companies seems to be that companies don’t so much dislike AI being used by random internet users to generate content related to their precious intellectual property without concern for artistic merit. Their actions seem to suggest that AI should be used by random internet users to generate content related to their valuable intellectual property without concern for artistic merit. Only as long as the copyright holders can get their beaks wet.
It’s unclear how legally compatible the OpenAI-Disney deal would be with any hypothetical future partnership between Disney and ByteDance, but if contract law prevents such a thing, then perhaps ByteDance would have to settle for a deal that makes CDance 2.0 the exclusive slop video generator of Universal-affiliated intellectual property like the Minions and the Fast & Furious cinematic universe.
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