Sony Pictures Entertainment sent a cease-and-desist letter to ByteDance in February 2026, demanding the removal of SPE's copyrighted content — including 'Breaking Bad' and Spider-Verse films — from the training data of Seedance 2.0, ByteDance's generative AI video tool. Sony alleged that Seedance 2.0 was trained on SPE content without authorization and generated unauthorized reproductions of SPE intellectual property.

In February 2026, SPE's general counsel Jill Ratner sent a formal cease-and-desist letter to ByteDance, alleging that its Seedance 2.0 text-to-video model generated content that 'closely mimics SPE content' and 'incorporates well-known characters and other copyright-protected elements of SPE works.' SPE demanded ByteDance remove all SPE content from Seedance 2.0's training data and cease distributing infringing outputs. Sony was the fifth major studio to formally protest Seedance 2.0, joining Disney, Paramount, Warner Bros., and Netflix. The Motion Picture Association also sent a separate cease-and-desist to ByteDance on behalf of its member studios.