Hollywood hates the fake clip of these guys fighting

Karwai Tang/Getty Images

An AI-generated video of Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt beating each other up on a rooftop went viral this week, and it could be confused for a real movie scene—until you hear Pitt’s likeness say, “You killed Jeffrey Epstein.” Still, it was convincing enough to scare at least one screenwriter. “It’s likely over for us,” Deadpool franchise co-writer Rhett Reese posted on X in response to the 15-second clip. It was created using Seedance 2.0, an AI video tool owned by ByteDance that was unveiled this week. Then…the Motion Picture Association (MPA) released a statement accusing ByteDance of violating copyright law on a “massive scale.” SAG-AFTRA joined in yesterday, calling Seedance videos “blatant infringement.” Oopsie: Seedance appears to be producing videos that rip off protected works from studios including Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Paramount, Deadline reported. Eerily accurate knockoffs of beloved movie characters like Jack and Rose from Titanic, Spider-Man, and Shrek appear in other Seedance videos circulating online. Déjà vu: The MPA similarly urged OpenAI to curb copyright infringement after it launched the Sora 2 video generator last fall. OpenAI obliged, and Disney later struck a deal that allows Sora 2 to use some of its characters. It’s unclear if Hollywood would pursue a similar agreement with ByteDance, which is a Chinese company.