The Motion Picture Association (MPA) and ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, have signed an agreement to protect the film and television industry’s intellectual property within the Chinese company’s generative AI products.
The memorandum of understanding (MOU), announced on Monday, covers ByteDance’s most widely used generative AI tools: Seedance and Seedream, the video and image generation models, along with TikTok, CapCut and Dreamina. The goal is to build a shared framework of protections for copyrighted content and actors’ likenesses.
It all started with an incident that went viral in February 2026: some users used Seedance 2.0 to generate videos featuring the faces of stars such as Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt, without any authorization. The MPA responded with a formal cease-and-desist letter, accusing ByteDance of disregarding “well-established copyright law that protects the rights of creators and underpins millions of American jobs.” That letter kicked off months of negotiations, which led ByteDance to introduce more effective filters, watermarks and recognition systems in later versions of its models, including Seedance 2.5 and Seedream 5.0 Pro.
MPA Chairman and CEO Charles Rivkin commented: “Today’s agreement illustrates our belief that copyright is a cornerstone of the film and television industry – and reinforces our commitment to protect creative content.” For his part, John Rogovin, ByteDance’s general counsel, noted that the company “respects the intellectual property rights” underpinning creative industries and believes that “responsible innovation in AI goes hand in hand with meaningful protections for rightsholders.”
The case closely echoes what happened with Sora, OpenAI’s video model, launched in 2024 and swept up in similar controversies over the unauthorized use of well-known characters and faces, before its final shutdown in 2026. Unlike OpenAI, ByteDance has chosen to keep investing in Seedance, betting on clearer rules rather than pulling the product.
The agreement with the MPA could become a reference model for further deals between Hollywood studios and AI developers, in an industry where protecting intellectual property remains one of the most pressing challenges.
PhotoCredits: Foto di Steve A Johnson su Unsplash
