'Tom Cruise' and 'Brad Pitt' fight over Jeffrey Epstein in a viral AI video created using China's buzzy new Seedance tool (www.businessinsider.com)

ByteDance has launched Seedance 2.0, a groundbreaking AI video-generation tool capable of creating hyperrealistic videos, sparking a wave of creative and ethical debates in the AI/ML community. The tool allows users to craft cinematic content featuring well-known Hollywood actors, resulting in viral videos such as a dramatic fight scene between deepfake versions of Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt. The striking realism of these videos has raised alarms regarding copyright infringement, with the Motion Picture Association accusing ByteDance of massive violations of intellectual property rights. The significance of Seedance 2.0 lies in its multimodal capabilities, which integrate text, image, audio, and video inputs, giving creators unprecedented control over video metrics. This tool amplifies the competition in AI innovation, particularly between the U.S. and China, reminiscent of previous developments like DeepSeek’s AI reasoning model. As American entities, including OpenAI with its own video generation tool Sora, face similar copyright challenges, the accessibility of such technology raises important questions about the protection of creative rights in an era of rapidly advancing AI capabilities.