A bipartisan Senate duo wants ByteDance to shut down its Seedance artificial intelligence tool, calling it a “glaring example” of copyright infringement that was launched without regard for U.S. law.
Sen. Marsha Blackburn, Tennessee Republican, and Sen. Peter Welch, Vermont Democrat, said users generated a fake brawl between actors Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise and staged a rewritten ending to the hit TV show “Stranger Things” moments after Seedance 2.0 launched in February.
“This technology is the most glaring example of copyright infringement from a ByteDance product to date, and you must immediately shut down Seedance and implement meaningful safeguards to prevent further infringing output,” the senators wrote in a letter dated Monday.
ByteDance is a Chinese tech company that was forced to sell its majority stake in TikTok’s U.S. operations under a law passed by Congress and signed by President Joseph R. Biden.
The second Trump administration facilitated the sale of U.S. operations from ByteDance to TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC.
Oracle, Silver Lake and Abu Dhabi’s MGX are the major investors in the new U.S. TikTok venture.
The senators’ letter shows that U.S. lawmakers are still concerned about ByteDance’s operations. It also underscores concerns about new AI models that may outpace regulations.
Policymakers are struggling with how to set guardrails around the emerging technology. They worry about unintended consequences, but also don’t want to hamstring U.S. innovators while other countries work to embrace and deploy AI.
Seedance 2.0 lets users produce short clips that marry video and audio to produce cinema-quality scenes.
The Motion Picture Association recently sent a cease and desist letter to ByteDance, citing studios’ copyright concerns.
In a written statement, ByteDance said it “respects intellectual property rights and we have heard the concerns regarding Seedance 2.0.”
The company added, “We are taking steps to strengthen current safeguards as we work to prevent the unauthorized use of intellectual property and likeness by users.”
Ms. Blackburn and Mr. Welch said the company should close Seedance if it wants to build “sustainable economic ties with democratic, free market economies.
“Responsible global companies follow the law and respect core economic rights, including intellectual property and personal likeness protections. By releasing Seedance 2.0 without any effort to obtain licenses for training materials or prevent unlawful and infringing outputs, ByteDance has shown it is willing to violate U.S. federal law and steal the intellectual property of American creators for its own monetary gain.”
Ms. Blackburn and Mr. Welch worked together in August to introduce the Transparency and Responsibility for Artificial Intelligence Networks Act, which allows musicians, artists, writers and other creators to determine whether their copyrighted works were used to train generative AI models.
“The TRAIN Act would protect creators by allowing them to access the courts to find out if their work is being used to train generative AI models and seek compensation for that misuse,” Ms. Blackburn said at the time.
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.