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Facing threats of legal action from Disney and complaints from several entertainment studios, ByteDance said it will curb the use of its Seedance AI video app. The tool’s newest outputs — widely circulated and praised for their lifelike quality — have alarmed studios concerned about potential violations of copyrighted material.
On Friday, Disney sent a cease-and-desist letter to ByteDance accusing it of supplying Seedance with a "pirated library" of the studio's copyrighted characters, including those from Marvel and Star Wars.
Disney's lawyers accused ByteDance of committing a "virtual smash-and-grab" of their intellectual property, including superheroes from Marvel, Star Wars and various cartoons.
On Monday ByteDance said that the company "respects intellectual property rights and we have heard the concerns regarding Seedance 2.0."
"We are taking steps to strengthen current safeguards as we work to prevent the unauthorised use of intellectual property and likeness by users."
Like other generative-AI tools, Seedance can create videos based on short text prompts. Many of Seedance's clips are based on real actors and shows and some have gone viral since the launch of its latest 2.0 version on 12 February.
The company has not disclosed what data it uses to train Seedance.
ByteDance had previously said the product had already paused the ability for users to upload images of real people. The company also said it respects intellectual property rights and copyright protections, and takes any potential infringement seriously.
Disney last year struck a $1bn (£730m) deal with the maker of ChatGPT and video-generation tool Sora, OpenAI, giving the platforms access to 200 characters from its franchises including Pixar, Marvel and Star Wars.
Disney's legal threat follows criticism from other organisations in Hollywood over the Seedance platform. Paramount Skydance has reportedly also sent Bytedance a cease-and-desist letter demanding Seedance stops using its content.
The Motion Picture Association, which represents major US studios like Warner Bros Discovery, Paramount and Netflix, has demanded that the tool "immediately cease its infringing activity".