AI Video of Brad Pitt & Tom Cruise Sparks Hollywood Fears | Seedance 2.0

The widely shared video was created by Irish director Ruairi Robinson using Seedance 2.0, a powerful AI video generation tool owned by Chinese technology company ByteDance. The production featured several elements typical of a big-budget film: elaborate camera movements, stunt choreography, crisp sound effects, and an atmospheric soundtrack.

With a two-line prompt and the click of a button, Seedance delivered a strikingly realistic result – a significant leap forward from previous AI-generated videos, often criticized for their low quality. The verisimilitude was so strong it prompted near-immediate condemnation from some of Hollywood’s leading organizations and companies.

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Rhett Reese, a screenwriter known for the “Deadpool” films, said in an interview that the video featuring Cruise and Pitt gave him “a chill down my spine.”

“For all of us who work in the industry and have dedicated our careers and lives to it, I think that’s just terrifying,” he said. “I can imagine that eliminating jobs across the board.”

ByteDance launched Seedance 2.0 last week, almost two months after a previous version didn’t provoke significant negative reaction. In a statement, the company praised the updated tool’s “physical accuracy, realism and control capability,” stating it meets the demands of “professional-level creative scenarios.”

“The creation process is more natural and efficient, allowing users to control their productions like a true ‘director’,” the statement added.

Users quickly began testing the platform. An alternate ending of “Game of Thrones” went viral, as did a video of rappers Kendrick Lamar and Drake – known for their rivalry – making peace on “The Tonight Show,” along with another featuring Samara Morgan, the vengeful girl from the horror franchise “The Ring,” emerging from an old television to pet a cat.

Robinson himself published new videos, including scenes of Pitt and Cruise facing off against a robot and another in which Pitt duels with a “zombie ninja” wielding a sword.

Meanwhile, Hollywood reacted swiftly. Charles Rivkin, president and CEO of the Motion Picture Association, called on ByteDance to “immediately cease its infringing activity,” stating in a note that Seedance 2.0 used copyrighted works without authorization “on a massive scale.” The Human Artistry Campaign, a global coalition advocating for the use of AI “with respect for irreplaceable artists, performers, and creatives,” declared on social media that the unauthorized creations violate “the most basic aspects of personal autonomy.”

Disney, which last year struck a $1 billion deal allowing users of OpenAI’s Sora to generate videos with its characters, sent a cease-and-desist notice to ByteDance. The company accused the platform of feeding Seedance with a “pirated library” of Disney characters — “as if Disney’s valuable intellectual property were public domain clip art.”

ByteDance, which also owns TikTok and was valued at $480 billion in the private market, said in a statement that it respects intellectual property rights and is aware of concerns surrounding Seedance.

“We are taking steps to reinforce existing safeguards while working to prevent unauthorized use of intellectual property and the image of individuals by users,” the company said.

As the agreement struck last year between Disney and OpenAI demonstrates, Hollywood has been grappling with the rapid advancement of generative artificial intelligence for years. The concerns expressed by Reese echo those during the Writers Guild strike in 2023, when thousands of professionals demanded that studios establish safeguards against the replacement of their jobs or the misuse of their creations by AI. The guild ultimately secured guarantees that the technology would not affect writers’ credits or compensation.

Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, SAG-AFTRA’s national executive director and chief negotiator, said the union’s contracts include specific and applicable rules regarding digital replication. According to him, content like the Cruise-Pitt fight “could not be produced by any of our contract signatories – studios or streaming platforms – without the specific and informed consent of those individuals.”

For Crabtree-Ireland, the main concern is that even if videos generated by platforms like Seedance “have no malicious intent,” they can “violate someone’s right to control how their image, their likeness, and their voice are used.”

Not everyone, however, is impressed with the new technology. Heather Anne Campbell, executive producer and writer for the animated series “Rick and Morty,” said her social media feeds have been flooded with videos created by Seedance, showing anime, science fiction, and improbable superhero battles. Still, she said she isn’t afraid of losing her job to the tool.

“Everyone is, I think, excited about the circus that’s come to town and is doing demos,” she said. “I haven’t seen anything really good yet. Nothing that’s blown me away, nothing touching, nothing provocative. It’s all garbage.”

Campbell added that AI services like Seedance are, at best, “mediocre-making machines,” and argued that the greatest works of art have never been produced quickly or impersonally.

Even so, some in Hollywood find it hard to imagine that studios won’t see AI as a way to cut costs.

“It would be cheaper to have AI write a script than to have me write a script,” Reese said. “I know, deep down, that’s where the terror comes from.”

He believes a long-term solution to the discomfort caused by AI can’t wait.