According to Axios, the Walt Disney Company has sent a cease and desist letter to ByteDance after the Chinese tech company infringed on the company’s work with AI.
Disney & ByteDance
Per the article, Axios obtained the letter from Disney, which “accuses ByteDance of pre-packaging its Seedance service ‘with a pirated library of Disney’s copyrighted characters from Star Wars, Marvel, and other Disney franchises, as if Disney’s coveted intellectual property were free public domain clip art.'”
Disney’s outside attorney, David Singer, later wrote the following statement:
Over Disney’s well-publicized objections, ByteDance is hijacking Disney’s characters by reproducing, distributing, and creating derivative works featuring those characters. ByteDance’s virtual smash-and-grab of Disney’s IP is willful, pervasive, and totally unacceptable.
We believe this is just the tip of the iceberg – which is shocking considering Seedance has only been available for a few days.
ByteDance launched Seedance 2.0 on Thursday, February 12, 2026.
Among the copyrighted characters, Spider-Man, Darth Vader, Star Wars’ Grogu, Peter Griffin from Family Guy, and others were used in Seedance videos. In the letter, Disney pointed out several social media and commercial service examples to show how far the infringement had gone.
The Motion Picture Association and the Human Artistry Campaign also spoke out on the matter. The latter stated that “authorities should use every legal tool at their disposal to stop this wholesale theft.”
This is not the first time Disney has spoken out against those illegally using their properties through AI. In September 2025, Disney sent a warning to Character.AI over several of its AI-based chatbots. After Disney announced its partnership with OpenAI’s Sora, a cease-and-desist letter was sent to Google regarding Gemini’s usage of Disney characters.
Disney’s current CEO Bob Iger recently outlined the future of Disney’s relationship with OpenAI during the Q1 Disney investor call. When asked about the future relationship between Disney and Sora through OpenAI, which was announced in December 2025, Iger explained the outlook of the current licensing agreement. The three-year agreement dictates that users can generate 30-second videos featuring roughly 250 Disney characters without a human face or voice.
As we previously reported, some of the characters that will be available through Sora include: Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Lilo, Stitch, Ariel, Belle, Beast, Cinderella, Baymax, Simba, Mufasa, as well as characters from the worlds of Encanto, Frozen, Inside Out, Moana, Monsters Inc., Toy Story, Up, and Zootopia. There will be animated or illustrated versions of Marvel and Lucasfilm characters like Black Panther, Captain America, Deadpool, Groot, Iron Man, Loki, Thor, Thanos, Darth Vader, Han Solo, Luke Skywalker, Leia, the Mandalorian, Stormtroopers, and Yoda.
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