Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt Trade Blows in the Latest AI Slop Video, and Hollywood Won’t Stand It

Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise went viral AI generated clip on social media, which caused a backlash in the film industry. A Chinese company A new video production model for ByteDanceSeedance 2.0, allowed people to create creative and realistic videos with short messages. Irish filmmaker Ruairi Robinson used two lines to make a clip of Pitt’s fight with Cruise.

If ByteDance sounds familiar to you, it’s because the company also owns TikTok internationally, albeit a relatively recent one. sold its US ownership of social media and video sharing platform for US companies. Oracle, MGX and Silver Lake each hold 15%.

The actors in this latest viral AI slop video still don’t look like they’ve been recreated — close-ups of fake Brad Pitt’s face, in particular, have a “mysterious valley,” a dreamlike AI look when the cuts blend seamlessly into his flesh. However, a CNET survey as of early Tuesday showed that while 94% of US adults believe meeting AI slop on social mediaonly 44% said they were confident they could tell real AI-generated videos.

One of the most inflammatory parts of the Pitt-Cruise video is the interview, as the computer images of the actors fight a murder plot named Jeffrey Epstein, a convicted sex offender who maintained relationships with the rich and powerful people around the world. The similarities between the two actors have been a vehicle to push conspiracy theories that have intensified as millions of pages of exchanged emails, receipts and other documents that make up the Epstein files continue to emerge from the US Department of Justice.

Hollywood is fighting back as AI content eats up and spits out actor likenesses and copyrighted content alike. Major studios and their employees alike have come together to reverse the precedent set by the viral AI video.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, the Motion Picture Association has demanded that ByteDance “immediately cease its infringing activity” with Seedance. SAG-AFTRA, the labor union that represents Hollywood actors, issued a statement Friday saying it “stands with the studios” in criticizing the Seedance video production model.

The Screen Actors Guild specifically pointed to Seedance’s use of facial expressions, simulating members’ voices without permission as a potential threat to get actors out of a job.

“Seedance 2.0 disregards the law, ethics, industry standards and basic principles of consent,” the actors’ union said in a statement.

Representatives for MPA and SAG-AFTRA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Similar videos produced by Seedance showed Star Wars characters competing with lightsabers and Marvel superheroes Spider-Man and Captain America clashing. Disney issued ByteDance a cease-and-desist order on Friday in response to the videos, which they say violate copyright law, according to the BBC.

A representative for ByteDance did not immediately respond to CNET’s request for comment, but released a statement to the BBC saying it is “taking steps to strengthen current safeguards as we work to prevent unauthorized use of intellectual property and user likenesses.”

After the viral incident, ByteDance updated its tool to prevent people from uploading images of real people to AI-generated content, but it remains to be seen how that policy will work. Of course, it won’t prevent the release of videos featuring disguised or anthropomorphic fictional characters like Spider-Man or Mickey Mouse.

As AI models progress create intermediate copies of cultural iconsthis won’t be the first — or last — official battleground for AI video processing.