ByteDance Shipped Hollywood's Characters for Free. Disney Sent a Letter.

ByteDance launched Seedance 2.0 on February 12. Within hours, users were generating videos of Brad Pitt fistfighting Tom Cruise on a rooftop. That clip hit 3.2 million views on X. Other users made Spider-Man dance with Grogu. Darth Vader argued with SpongeBob. The AI didn't hallucinate these characters. It knew them by name. Disney's cease-and-desist letter accused ByteDance of a "virtual smash-and-grab of Disney's copyrighted characters." The letter alleges Seedance came pre-packaged with what Disney called "a pirated library" of characters from Star Wars, Marvel, and other franchises — treated, Disney wrote, "as if Disney's coveted intellectual property were free public domain clip art." Paramount followed. Its head of intellectual property cited "blatant infringement" of South Park, Star Trek, The Godfather, SpongeBob SquarePants, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Dora the Explorer, and Avatar: The Last Airbender. The Motion Picture Association's CEO Charles Rivkin: "In just one day, Se