Senators Blackburn, Welch Call for AI Video Apps to Cease IP Infringement

AI

Yesterday, U.S. Senators Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law, and Peter Welch (D-VT) sent a letter addressed to Liang Rubo, CEO of Chinese technology company ByteDance, urging the immediate shutdown of ByteDance’s video generation platform Seedance 2.0. Calling ByteDance’s recent pledges to respect copyright “a delay tactic,” the Senators join a growing chorus of copyright advocates raising alarms about rampant infringement being committed by users of Seedance and other generative artificial intelligence (AI) platforms.

Senators Join Major Film Studios in Denouncing Unauthorized IP Use by Seedance

The letter from Senators Blackburn and Welch detail a list of videos featuring unauthorized content generated by Seedance 2.0 within 24 hours of its launch on February 12. Those videos, involving recognizable characters and scenes from incredibly popular entertainment franchises like Stranger Things, Marvel and DC Comics, “rack[ed] up millions of views and celebrating openly and enthusiastically, the theft of American creative work,” according to the Senators.

Seedance’s ability to generate unauthorized video content poses a direct threat to the American creative community, underscored by claims from one Seedance creator that it only cost nine cents to replicate the most expensive shot in the 2025 film F1. By releasing Seedance 2.0 without any effort to obtain licenses for either training materials or outputs, ByteDance has shown its willingness to violate U.S. federal law codifying intellectual property protections enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.

The Senators note that Seedance 2.0 has been justifiably denounced by multiple stakeholders in the creative community. On the same day Seedance was launched, Motion Pictures Association (MPA) CEO Charles Rivka released a statement calling upon ByteDance to immediately cease all infringing activities through the video generation platform. The day after Seedance 2.0’s release, American entertainment and media giant Walt Disney Company sent a cease-and-desist letter to ByteDance urging that the company prevent Seedance from generating outputs featuring characters from several entertainment franchises including Star Wars, Spider-Man and Family Guy.

Copyright Backlash Leads ByteDance to Halt Global Rollout of Video Generation App

ByteDance reports taking steps to strengthen current safeguards and prevent the unauthorized use of intellectual property and likenesses. However, Senators Blackburn and Welch indicated strong disbelief, calling out ByteDance for advancing the AI sector’s trend of stealing works at the creative community’s expense. Their viewpoint is reinforced by China’s long-time status as a major source of copyright infringement, including that nation’s placement on the U.S. Trade Representative’s Priority Watch List in its 2025 Special 301 Report.

Two days before Senators Blackburn and Welch sent their letter to ByteDance, news reports indicated that the Chinese technology company had agreed to pause the global launch of Seedance 2.0, with legal disputes over copyright cited as the main cause. Similar backlash led OpenAI to change the third-party rights model for its Sora 2 video generation app last October, moving from an opt-out framework that required rightsholders to ask for infringing outputs to stop to an opt-in framework requiring the rightsholder’s authorization before content using their IP is generated.

The letter to ByteDance is just the latest bipartisan effort on copyright issues involving Senators Blackburn and Welch. Last August, the two were among four co-sponsors of the Transparency and Responsibility for Artificial Intelligence Networks (TRAIN) Act, which would create an administrative process by which copyright owners can obtain data by subpoena regarding the use of their works to train generative AI models. In December, Senators Blackburn and Welch also introduced as co-sponsors the Visual Artists Copyright Reform Act of 2025, which seeks to streamline the registration process for several forms of visual art.

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