Sony Pictures Entertainment

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.

Sony Pictures Entertainment announced plans to use generative AI to produce films and television content more efficiently and at lower cost. CEO Tony Vinciquerra stated publicly at a May 2024 investor conference that the company is 'very focused on AI' and intends to use it across stages of the moviemaking process.

At a May 30, 2024 investor event in Japan, SPE CEO Tony Vinciquerra said the company planned to use generative AI — a category of AI that can produce new text, images, video, and audio — to streamline film and TV production and cut costs. The precise workflow applications (e.g., visual effects, pre-visualization, editing) were not specified publicly. Labor union agreements stemming from the 2023 Hollywood strikes were noted as constraints on the scope of AI deployment.