Feb. 19, 2026
The list of Hollywood companies fighting back against the hyper-realistic AI videos being generated by ByteDance’s Seedance 2.0 has grown again. On Wednesday, Sony’s legal team sent a cease and desist letter to the Chinese tech company demanding that the company stop allowing users to generate Sony-controlled characters like Spider-Man and Walter White from Breaking Bad.
“Given the egregious nature of Seedance 2.0’s outputs and the complete lack of observable copyright guardrails at launch, SPE can only conclude that ByteDance’s infringements are willful,” said Sony Pictures Entertainment’s general counsel Jill Ratner in a letter obtained by Variety. “SPE will not tolerate delayed or half-baked measures … Please contact us immediately to confirm that effective, robust, and meaningful guardrails are being implemented forthwith.”
The Sony action follows similar recent actions by Netflix, Disney, SAG-AFTRA, and The Motion Picture Association (MPA). This past weekend, ByteDance released a statement pledging to address the rampant IP infringement by Seedance 2.0 users, but that hasn’t stopped Hollywood studios from officially weighing in to get direct confirmation regarding their IP.
In the case of Netflix, the company set a deadline that expires this week, requiring a direct response from ByteDance, otherwise, the streaming video company plans to file a lawsuit against the Chinese company best known for popularizing the TikTok app.
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