In the last week several things have impacted the legal and practical viability of generative AI for use as an originating medium. Here are just three, which we all should be aware of. Tell me your thoughts on these!
1. The US Supreme Court has denied to consider a change to the US Copyright office rule that AI generated content CANNOT BE COPYRIGHTED. This means that using AI generated content is virtually guaranteed to prevent you obtaining affordable E&O insurance, or getting distribution at all. To obtain copyright in your AI generated work, you must transform it so that it is substantially different than what came out of the render engine - or you must have provided all original materials, images, photographs, etc which you created yourself and then use the AI merely as an animation tool. The practical usefulness, in terms of professional, commercial production is therefore not anywhere near as wonderful as some people wish it was.
2. ByteDance halted global release last week of Seedance 2.0, the latest version of its AI video generator, following severe copyright infringement allegations by several Hollywood studios. See one article here: https://techcrunch.com/2026/03/15/bytedance-reportedly-pauses-global-lau...
3. Today March 17, US Senate ordered ByteDance to immediately shut down the Seedance video app, citing severe copyright and privacy issues. Seedance 2.0 “is the most glaring example of copyright infringement from a ByteDance product to date, and you must immediately shut down Seedance and implement meaningful safeguards to prevent further infringing outputs,” Blackburn, R-Tenn., and Welch, D-Vt., wrote in a letter to ByteDance CEO Liang Rubo that was first obtained by CNBC.
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/17/bytedance-seedance-shut-down-tiktok-mars...
