MPA And TikTok Owner ByteDance Reach Agreement On Restricting IP Use In Deepfakes

The Motion Picture Association said that it had reached an agreement with TikTok owner ByteDance on a restriction framework over the use of studio intellectual property in AI video and images.

The agreement follows a cease and desist letter that the trade association fired off in February to ByteDance over its use of IP in Seedream 5.0 Lite and Seedance 2.0. Users were prompting the Chinese AI tool to repurpose copyrighted material from major studios, including a video in which Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt are fighting.

MPA Chairman 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 agreement applies to image models provided by TikTok, the TikTok USDS Joint Venture, CapCut and Dreamina, per the MPA. The trade association said that recent launches of Seedream 5.0 Pro and Seedance 2.5 have shown ByteDance’s “continued advances in IP protections.”

John Rogovin, the general counsel for ByteDance, said in a statement, “This MOU establishes an important framework for continued collaboration as the technology evolves, across a variety of products and platforms.”

The MPA called the agreement “an important step forward in establishing that IP can and should be protected in the generative AI space.”

That said, indivudual studios are challenging the use of their IP in AI models. Warner Bros., NBCUniversal and The Walt Disney Co. sued Midjourney over its models that generated images of their IP. The litigation focuses on the outputs that are generated from AI as well as the use of copyright protected material in training models. Midjourney has argued that it is a fair use.