Motion Picture Association: Seedance 2.0 Copyright Dispute

The studios' trade group since 1922

The major studios formed the Motion Picture Association, then the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America, in 1922 to represent the industry's interests, including on copyright. Its best-known public product is the film ratings system, created in 1968 under then-president Jack Valenti. Charles Rivkin, a former media executive and US ambassador, has led the organization as chairman and chief executive since 2017. Its members today are Disney, Netflix, Paramount, Amazon MGM Studios and Prime Video, Sony Pictures, Universal, and Warner Bros. Discovery, which collectively fund its lobbying, anti-piracy and ratings operations. [1]

Its first cease-and-desist to an AI company

ByteDance's video model Seedance 2.0, released in February 2026, could generate realistic clips of recognizable performers and characters. Clips depicting an AI-generated Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise and other studio-owned characters spread on social media within days. Disney sent ByteDance its own cease-and-desist on February 13, 2026, and the Motion Picture Association followed on February 20, 2026 with a formal letter, written by MPA general counsel Karyn Temple and sent to ByteDance's Culver City office. The letter cited specific infringing outputs and stated that the scale and consistency of the results demonstrated systemic infringement rather than inadvertence, asking ByteDance to confirm concrete remediation steps by February 27. Paramount Skydance separately accused ByteDance of infringing Star Trek, South Park and Dora the Explorer material, and two US senators called it the most glaring copyright infringement case yet from a ByteDance product. [2]

ByteDance responded on February 16, 2026 with a brief statement saying it respects copyright and would strengthen existing safeguards, which Temple characterized as insufficient. The sourcing available for this page does not show a further public resolution, a filed lawsuit, or a documented change to Seedance's output filters after that exchange. [2]

An established role applied to a new target

Atlas interpretation: The MPA's action against ByteDance is a continuation of its founding purpose, protecting its member studios' copyrighted material, applied to a new category of infringer. Its usual anti-piracy target is unauthorized distribution of existing films; a generative model that can produce new, unauthorized depictions of copyrighted characters on demand is a different mechanism, and the letter's language treats it as one. Whether that dispute settles quietly, escalates to litigation, or sets a template other studios and other AI video companies follow is not yet established in the sources checked here, and this page does not take a position on the merits of either side's claims. [2]