Disney Targets ByteDance Over AI Copyright

- In a cease-and-desist letter sent on February 13, 2026, Disney's legal counsel accused ByteDance of creating a "pirated library" of its characters and called the AI tool a "virtual smash-and-grab" of its intellectual property. - The dispute has drawn in other industry groups, with the actors' union SAG-AFTRA condemning Seedance 2.0 for infringing on its members' likenesses and the Motion Picture Association (MPA) demanding an immediate halt to the alleged infringements. - ByteDance's Seedance 2.0, released in February 2026, is a multimodal model that can combine up to 12 files (images, videos, and audio) to generate video clips up to 15 seconds long with 2K resolution, a significant leap in controllable, high-fidelity output. - In response to the legal threats, ByteDance stated it "respects intellectual property rights" and is "taking steps to strengthen current safeguards," but has not detailed what those changes will be. - Enforcing U.S. copyright claims presents a significant challenge, as ByteDance no longer has a known American presence, and Chinese courts have historically been hesitant to enforce such judgments. - Disney's legal action is part of a dual strategy: it is also actively suing other AI companies like Midjourney while simultaneously signing a major licensing deal with OpenAI in December 2025 to allow its characters to be used in the Sora video generator. - This conflict is one of more than 60 copyright lawsuits filed by creators and media companies against AI developers, including cases brought by The New York Times, Getty Images, and groups of authors and artists against companies like OpenAI, Microsoft, and Stability AI. - A key legal precedent in AI copyright is the *Thomson Reuters v. Ross Intelligence* case, where a court rejected a "fair use" defense, ruling that the unauthorized use of copyrighted material to train a competing AI product harmed the potential market for licensing that data.