According to news on July 5, a few months ago, a fake AI video of Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise fighting on a rooftop set off alarm bells in Hollywood about ByteDance’s AI video model Seedance. The Motion Picture Association of America has asked Byte to stop related infringing activities.

But the backlash did not stop Seedance from continuing to contact the American film and television industry. According to the Los Angeles Times, while facing disputes over copyright and image rights, Byte continued to recruit about 100 positions, signed multiple independent filmmakers and artists, privately discussed AI film financing, held a promotional party in Cannes, and gave a demonstration at the AI ​​on the Lot event in Culver City, Los Angeles.

Public reports have not yet shown that Seedance has been officially included in the commercial production pipeline of mainstream blockbusters, but gray areas already exist. Joel Kuwahara, an early animation producer on "The Simpsons," told the Los Angeles Times: "A lot of studios in the industry didn't officially approve the use of Seedance, but they tacitly allowed it to be used... kind of like 'Don't ask, don't tell.'"

Byte declined to comment on the U.S. expansion.

$9 vs $24 per minute

The attraction comes first from the cost.

The Los Angeles Times quoted data from the model evaluation agency Artificial Analysis as saying that Seedance ranks high in cost-effectiveness, with video generation with audio at about US$9 per minute, which is lower than Google Veo's US$24 per minute. The public page of Artificial Analysis also classifies Seedance as a comparison object for video model quality, generation time, and price. The price indicators are converted according to conditions such as 1080p, 5 seconds, and 24fps.

For independent filmmakers, this gap is enough to change the budget table.

who is using it

Steven Schneider, the producer of the horror film "The Haunting", has announced the production of the hybrid AI horror film "Terrarium". Director Jason Zada ​​said that the film will be generated using the Seedance model. His workflow is no longer to write the script first, then shoot, and then edit. Instead, he advances writing, casting, prompt generation and editing in parallel, and changes the script every day based on the "samples" generated by AI.

Zada estimates that it only costs about $5 to generate a 15-second high-definition video. He also said that he plans to shoot with real actors in the studio first, and then decide which parts will be produced traditionally and which parts will be synthesized with AI. He is a member of the Directors Guild of America and will also hire union actors.

Zada also told the Los Angeles Times that Seedance has offered some major Hollywood studios $2 million in exchange for unrestricted special access. This figure was reported by Zada ​​and was not publicly confirmed by ByteDance.

Another type of user is individual creators who directly use AI as their main creative tool.

The Los Angeles Times mentioned that creator Kavan Cardoza's AI fantasy series "The Chronicle of Bones" was produced using Seedance, and new episodes are released on YouTube every month. A single episode is played an average of about 3 million times, and the channel audience is about 500,000. What Cardoza valued most was character consistency: he took reference photos of himself, then fed these images into Seedance, which repeatedly generated the same character in different shots.

The official Byte Seed page's positioning of Seedance also corresponds to this selling point: it supports the generation of multi-lens videos from text and images, emphasizing smooth movements, multi-lens narratives, subject and style consistency, and prompt word understanding of complex actions and camera movements.

where is the ceiling

Seedance's upper limit in Hollywood is equally clear.

The first is copyright and portrait rights. The video of the celebrity's fake beating caused a backlash because it combined the image of real actors with the texture of a movie. SAG-AFTRA, the Screen Actors Guild of America, has always opposed the unauthorized use of synthetic actors. Cardoza envisions that in the future, "synthetic actors" can be used to replace high-priced stars. This kind of statement can easily conflict with labor unions, actor licensing, and portrait compensation mechanisms.

Second are geopolitical and business risks. Luma CEO Amit Jain acknowledged in the report the popularity of Seedance and its expansion in the United States, but believed that traditional large studios may at best use Chinese models for pre-concept design; once they enter formal commercial production, intellectual property rights and geopolitical risks will make it difficult for blockbuster projects to directly adopt them.

The frame of reference has changed

What this incident really changes is the frame of reference for AI video competition.

In the past, the U.S. film and television industry’s anxiety about AI videos came more from U.S. companies such as OpenAI, Runway, Luma, and Google Veo. OpenAI’s Sora has discontinued its video tool. Now, Chinese models such as Seedance, Kuaishou Keling and Alibaba HappyHorse are beginning to put pressure on picture quality, character consistency and price. For creators, the choice of tools is very realistic: whoever is cheap, easy to use, and can produce editable footage will be used first.

The pressure on American AI video companies is also here. Hollywood may not be willing to openly admit to using the byte model, and major studios will keep their distance due to compliance and IP risks; but if independent filmmakers and AI creators have used it to create communicable works, market education has already occurred.

What can be confirmed at present is that Seedance is getting real use from the fringes of the film and television industry and independent creators; what is not yet confirmed is whether it can cross the gates of copyright, labor unions, image licensing, and Sino-US technology trust, and enter the formal production chain of mainstream blockbusters.

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