An AI-generated video clip produced by a Chinese AI company of stars Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt fighting is going viral and it is sending Hollywood into a tailspin.
The computer-generated video shows Cruise and Pitt on a roof top fighting with dramatic music behind them. It is just one of a series of videos the company released this week. The hyper realism of clip has tongues wagging and the clip has many in Hollywood worried over being replaced entirely by artificial intelligence and despairing that we are coming dangerously close to a new day when movies can be made without the participation of actors, writers, and other movie industry professionals.
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The company also released a clip where Jack comes alive at the end of Titanic and that is also going viral.
The Motion Picture Association condemned the Chinese company over the video saying that Seedance 2.0 is violating copyright and trademark laws and opening the door for widespread theft of intellectual property, Variety reported.
“In a single day, the Chinese AI service Seedance 2.0 has engaged in unauthorized use of U.S. copyrighted works on a massive scale,” an MPA spokesperson said in a statement, Variety reported. “By launching a service that operates without meaningful safeguards against infringement, ByteDance is disregarding well-established copyright law that protects the rights of creators and underpins millions of American jobs. ByteDance should immediately cease its infringing activity.”
Several denizens of the entertainment industry have already come out to express their horror over the videos.
Screenwriter Rhett Reese, who is a writer on the Marvel super hero Deadpool franchise, is one who expressed his shock over the videos. He took to X and wrote “I hate to say it. It’s likely over for us.”
“In next to no time, one person is going to be able to sit at a computer and create a movie indistinguishable from what Hollywood now releases,” Reese added on another X post.
“This was a 2 line prompt in Seedance 2,” Reese also wrote. “If the Hollywood is cooked guys are right maybe the Hollywood is cooked guys are cooked too idk.”
“I am not at all excited about AI encroaching into creative endeavors,” he wrote in another post to clarify his feelings. “To the contrary, I’m terrified. So many people I love are facing the loss of careers they love. I myself am at risk. When I wrote ‘It’s over,’ I didn’t mean it to sound cavalier or flippant. I was blown away by the Pitt v Cruise video because it is so professional. That’s exactly why I’m scared. My glass half empty view is that Hollywood is about to be revolutionized/decimated. If you truly think the Pitt v Cruise video is unimpressive slop, you’ve got nothing to worry about. But I’m shook.”
For his part, tech entrepreneur Matt Shumer warned that what is just starting to happen in Hollywood will quite soon happen in every industry, the Hollywood Reporter noted.
“The experience that tech workers have had over the past year, of watching AI go from ‘helpful tool’ to ‘does my job better than I do,’ is the experience everyone else is about to have,” he wrote. “Law, finance, medicine, accounting, consulting, writing, design, analysis, customer service … If you tried ChatGPT in 2023 or early 2024 and thought ‘this makes stuff up’ or ‘this isn’t that impressive,’ you were right … The models available today are unrecognizable from what existed even six months ago.”
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