Senators Welch, Blackburn call for AI video apps to cease IP infringement
Senators Welch, Blackburn call for AI video apps to cease IP infringement
The Senators, who have called ByteDance’s recent pledges to respect copyright “a delay tactic”, have joined a growing chorus of copyright advocates raising alarms about rampant infringement being committed by users of Seedance and other generative artificial intelligence (AI) platforms
U.S. Senators Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law; and Peter Welch (D-VT) have sent a letter addressed to Liang Rubo, CEO of Chinese technology company ByteDance, urging the immediate shutdown of ByteDance’s video generation platform Seedance 2.0. The Senators, who have called ByteDance’s recent pledges to respect copyright “a delay tactic”, have joined a growing chorus of copyright advocates raising alarms about rampant infringement being committed by users of Seedance and other generative artificial intelligence (AI) platforms. The letter from Senators Welch and Blackburn details a list of videos featuring unauthorized content generated by Seedance 2.0 within 24 hours of its launch on February 12. The videos involve recognizable characters and scenes from incredibly popular entertainment franchises like Stranger Things, Marvel and DC Comics and have racked up millions of views and are celebrating openly and enthusiastically the theft of American creative work; the Senators said.
The ability of Seedance to generate unauthorized video content poses a direct threat to the American creative community, underscored by one Seedance creator’s claims that it only costs nine cents to replicate the most expensive shot in the 2025 film F1. ByteDance - by releasing Seedance 2.0 without any effort to obtain licenses for either training materials or outputs - has shown its willingness to violate U.S. federal law codifying intellectual property protections preserved in the U.S. Constitution. Seedance 2.0 has been arguably condemned by multiple stakeholders in the creative community. The same day Seedance was launched, Motion Pictures Association (MPA) CEO Charles Rivka issued a statement calling upon ByteDance to immediately stop all infringing activities through the video generation platform. The day after Seedance 2.0’s release, American entertainment and media giant Walt Disney Company sent a cease-and-desist letter to ByteDance urging the company to restrain Seedance from generating outputs featuring characters from multiple entertainment franchises including Star Wars, Spider-Man and Family Guy.
ByteDance has reported taking steps to strengthen current safeguards and prevent the unauthorized use of intellectual property and likenesses. However, Senators Welch and Blackburn indicated strong disbelief, calling out ByteDance for improving the AI sector’s trend of stealing works at the creative community’s expense. Their point of view is buttressed by China’s long-time status as a major source of copyright infringement, including that nation’s placement on the U.S. Trade Representative’s Priority Watch List in its 2025 Special 301 Report. Two days prior to Senators Blackburn and Welch sending their letter to ByteDance, news reports indicated that the Chinese technology company had agreed to pause the global launch of Seedance 2.0, with legal disputes over copyright cited as the main cause. OpenAI was led by similar backlash to change the third-party rights model for its Sora 2 video generation app last October, moving from an opt-out framework that needed rightsholders to ask for infringing outputs to stop to an opt-in framework needing the rightsholder’s authorization before content using their IP is generated.
