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."
In my opinion, I hope that this lawsuit fails. I know that the movie industry already follows similar practices to what Musk has done. If a studio goes to a certain musician and the price is too high to include their music in the show, they'll go to a different artist and ask them to create a song that sounds like the song that they originally wanted.
If this lawsuit succeeds it's going to open the door for them to sue anyone that makes art that's remotely close to their copyrighted work. All they will need to do is claim that it "might have been created by AI with a prompt specifying our work" without actually having to have any proof beforehand.
I'm terrified how fear of AI is suddenly making tighter copyright laws more popular.
Yeah, don't know what to think. Is this closer to copying a melody from a certain ballad or using the same chords that no-one owns and have been reused through decades to write a ballad... 🤔
It’s one thing to just do a similar melody by accident, and entirely another to ask the artist if you could use the melody, get explicitly denied, then go on and use that melody anyway, changing a single less relevant note in there.
I think everyone gets this distinction innately, we just get caught up in the copyright law aspect of this, which I’m not claiming isn’t relevant. It’s just Musk being a clear scumbag, whichever way you lean on the lawfulness side of it.
Edit: What I mean to say is, it’s fairly clearly morally corrupted and wrong, but it’s not so immediately clear to accept as such in this reality, where declaring so might have consequences beyond this instance.
If it wasn't clear from my comment, I'm not defending Musk. Don't care much about him.
I just don't envy the judge that has to consider this. I'm a musician, and find it complicated to judge such issues in the musical landscape.
Was replying more in the general, not specifically to you, but yeah. I’m a musician too myself, and have a wide range of other creatives in my inner circle, and this whole copyright topic is extremely hard. But I think we mostly can ignore that aspect when we consider the moral side as-is. A lot less complicated that way. Again, more in the general sense for all the comments in this post, sorry to drop it all here.
No worries. Thanks for your input. 🍻
I don't get your comment, first it's an argument that says, others are doing fucked up wrong things, therefore Elon is justified doing it too.
In the second paragraph you fear monger that anyone who creates anything remotely similar will be sued with no proof , but this case literally spells out that Elon first asked for the image, then used one similar anyway when denied, then mentioned the source in question twice in his speech.
It's literally nothing like the thing you fearmonger about, how your comment got 17 upvotes is beyond me.
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.
@[email protected] 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.
You're right, whether it's AI generated or not doesn't matter.
This is a copyright infringment matter in which "Fair Use" will become a major factor. https://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/four-factors/
In this case, if the courts rule in favor of Alcon there's a danger that this expands how copyright law is judged and future cases can use that ruling in their favor. It would make it a lot easier for them to only prove that someone wanted an image that "looks like" even when the image wouldn't normally be held to that level of scrutiny at face value.
You're right that there are other factors at play here:
They are absolutely concerned that Musk is trying to associate his product with Blade Runner and if the case hinges on the association rather than the image in question then I don't see a problem with that.
But it's very concerning that the image itself seems to be a major factor in this case, specifically that they are accusing "(WBD) of conspiring with Musk and Tesla to steal the image and infringe Alcon's copyright".
Yes, you can already sue someone else for copyright infringment with hand drawn images. What matters for the decision are a number of factors (as listed out on that link to fair use) one of them being how closely your drawing resembles the copyrighted material. Here's an article about a photographer who successfully sued a painter who plagiarized her work: https://boingboing.net/2024/05/17/photographer-wins-lawsuit-against-alleged-painter-who-plagiarized-her-work.html
In my laic opinion no criteria for fair use is fulfilled here, so it would be really hard to argue that it would set some harsher precedent that exists, in real life proving someone wanted what looks like something else will be hard to prove as they would need either the exact prompt and then prove what the author meant by that point, IANAL but AFAIK proving what someone was thinking when entered the prompt will be pretty difficult or it will have to be something obvious like "make it a slightly different version of that iconic blade runner picture"
Here the court will have documents showing that they tried to get permission to use the picture when denied they used something that's essentially the same thing while also livestreaming themselves mentioning what they are ripping off, so it's a much different case to some random person generating a similar picture.
This to me is very close to the Kanye New Slaves case, feel free to listen to it then go on youtube and checkout "gyöngyhajú lány" while you will find that kanyes version is slightly different, he entirely ripped the song off, then tried get permission afterwards, which he didn't get and had to settle for undisclosed millions.