ByteDance released Seedance 2.0 this week, and within hours Irish filmmaker Ruairi Robinson typed a two-line prompt and generated Tom Cruise fighting Brad Pitt on a rooftop. It went mega-viral. Riffs on Spider-Man, Titanic, Stranger Things, Lord of the Rings, and Shrek followed by the hundreds. The MPA denounced “massive” copyright infringement. Rhett Reese, who wrote the Deadpool films, posted: “It’s likely over for us.”
I’ll push back a bit and say: this is truly the beginning. While Seedance 2.0 is the best I’ve seen – magical, really – it can (and will) get better. As it does, the copyright fight will intensify, though it may be unwinnable. It was one thing for Disney to license some of its IP to OpenAI. Both companies are U.S.-based and are subject to the rule of law. ByteDance, however, is a Chinese company and it does not answer to Hollywood. As you know, Chinese companies do not have a great track record of respecting U.S. copyrights, trademarks, or patents.
Legal battles are important, but you should not let them distract you from thinking about how AI is moving the main production friction point from money to imagination. To me the destination is clear; I’ve been calling it “social production.” Whatever you believe social media did to traditional media, social production is about to do to production.
Based on the speed of AI innovation, I think it’s wise to start scenario planning based on the assumption that social production is already here. Rhett Reese’s world may be over, but for everyone else with a story to tell and a laptop to tell it on, it is just beginning.
Author’s note: This is not a sponsored post. I am the author of this article and it expresses my own opinions. I am not, nor is my company, receiving compensation for it. This work was created with the assistance of various generative AI models.