Motion Picture Association Strikes Deal with ByteDance for IP Protections in AI Video, Image Models

The Motion Picture Association and ByteDance on Monday said the two had developed a framework to protect the film and TV industries’ intellectual property across ByteDance’s suite of AI generative products, including the AI video and image generators Seedance and Seedream.

The memorandum of understanding (MOU) comes months after the MPA in February sent ByteDance a cease-and-desist letter and denounced the company following the release of Seedance 2.0, which saw creators produce riffs on actors including Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise. The MPA accused the company at the time of “disregarding well-established copyright law that protects the rights of creators and underpins millions of American jobs” on “a massive scale.”

The two sides eventually began conversations to develop IP protections in ByteDance’s models, which the two said were reflected in the company’s release of Seedance 2.5 and Seedream 5.0 Pro last month. The generators are available across the Chinese TikTok owner’s collection of apps, including TikTok, the U.S. variant of TikTok, CapCut and Dreamina.

“Today’s agreement illustrates our belief that copyright is a cornerstone of the film and television industry – and reinforces our commitment to protect creative content,” MPA Chairman and CEO Charles Rivkin said in a statement. “For the past several months, we have had constructive engagement with ByteDance to implement meaningful guardrails on Seedance and Seedream, and this MOU reflects our shared determination to continue our work together to further fortify those guardrails.”

The move reflects how Hollywood has navigated the murkier elements of generative AI, a technology many in the industry are fascinated by yet worry undercuts their work through the unauthorized scraping of likenesses to train their models. The MPA similarly tore into OpenAI’s former video model Sora before the company imposed its own guardrails.

“ByteDance respects the intellectual property rights that underpin creative industries around the world, and we believe responsible innovation in AI goes hand in hand with meaningful protections for rightsholders,” John Rogovin, ByteDance’s general counsel, added in a statement. “We appreciate the productive engagement with the MPA and its members as we continue to strengthen safeguards across our generative AI services. This MOU establishes an important framework for continued collaboration as the technology evolves across a variety of products and platforms.”