Chinese tech giant ByteDance pledges to strengthen protections for its new AI video model following accusations of mass copyright infringement from Hollywood studios and actors.

BEIJING: Chinese technology giant ByteDance has vowed to bolster safeguards for its new artificial intelligence video model.

The pledge comes after major Hollywood studios and an actors’ union accused the tool of enabling widespread copyright infringement.

The company, best known as the owner of TikTok, acknowledged concerns regarding its Seedance 2.0 model in a statement.

“We respect intellectual property rights,” ByteDance said, adding it was taking steps to “strengthen current safeguards” to prevent “unauthorised use of intellectual property and likeness by users.”

The Motion Picture Association last week accused Seedance of “unauthorized use of US copyrighted works on a massive scale”.

MPA chairman Charles Rivkin, representing studios like Disney and Netflix, said the model “operates without meaningful safeguards against infringement” and “should immediately cease”.

The actors’ union SAG-AFTRA also condemned “the blatant infringement” and unauthorised use of its members’ voices and likenesses.

Seedance 2.0 has generated highly realistic, Hollywood-style scenes that have been widely shared online.

These include videos depicting Tom Cruise brawling with Brad Pitt and numerous combinations of lifelike characters from superhero films and video games.

Some clips have been watched millions of times.

The AI video model is currently only available as a limited test version in China.

Swiss-based consultancy CTOL Digital Solutions recently hailed Seedance 2.0 as “the most advanced AI video generation model available… surpassing OpenAI’s Sora 2 and Google’s Veo 3.1 in practical testing”.

 The Sun Malaysia