Elon Musk may have personally used AI to rip off a Blade Runner 2049 image for a Tesla cybercab event after producers rejected any association between their iconic sci-fi movie and Musk or any of his companies.
In a lawsuit filed Tuesday, lawyers for Alcon Entertainment—exclusive rightsholder of the 2017 Blade Runner 2049 movie—accused Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) of conspiring with Musk and Tesla to steal the image and infringe Alcon's copyright to benefit financially off the brand association.
Alcon said it would never allow Tesla to exploit its Blade Runner film, so "although the information given was sparse, Alcon learned enough information for Alcon’s co-CEOs to consider the proposal and firmly reject it, which they did." Specifically, Alcon denied any affiliation—express or implied—between Tesla's cybercab and Blade Runner 2049.
"Musk has become an increasingly vocal, overtly political, highly polarizing figure globally, and especially in Hollywood," Alcon's complaint said. If Hollywood perceived an affiliation with Musk and Tesla, the complaint said, the company risked alienating not just other car brands currently weighing partnerships on the Blade Runner 2099 TV series Alcon has in the works, but also potentially losing access to top Hollywood talent for their films.
The "Hollywood talent pool market generally is less likely to deal with Alcon, or parts of the market may be, if they believe or are confused as to whether, Alcon has an affiliation with Tesla or Musk," the complaint said.
Musk, the lawsuit said, is "problematic," and "any prudent brand considering any Tesla partnership has to take Musk’s massively amplified, highly politicized, capricious and arbitrary behavior, which sometimes veers into hate speech, into account."
I think what they're trying to say is that if asking AI to make something in the style of Blade Runner is copyright infringement, that opens the door to asking an artist to make something in the style of Blade Runner being copyright infringement. I don't know how I personally feel about that, but it's at least how I interpreted the comment.
@kameecoding@lemmy.world exactly this.
In the U.S. we have what's known as a legal" precedent". If a court case makes a decision on something, it massively increases the chances that other courts will use that same decision in similar future cases.
But the fact that this is AI generated has nothing to do with anything, if you ask for the rights of an image from someone they deny you, then you mention the original image multiple times to promote your product using a hand drawn near copy you will be also in trouble, because what you are doing is rather clear to see and rather easy to prove you know you are in the wrong.
So you saying that anything AI generated that is similar to something else will get sued for copyright infringement makes no sense, unless you can already do that for hand drawn images.
I don't think making art in the style of a copyrighted piece of work is wrong. Like writing a fanfic in an existing world (Harry Potter, LOTR, Blade Runner, etc.) isn't copyright infringement, it's covered by fair use. I think Alcon are suing the wrong person. A better case for copyright infringement is the AI company who trained their AI using copyrighted material that they almost certainly did not have permission to use.