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.”
If Tesla and WBD are found to have violated copyright and false representation laws, that potentially puts both companies on the hook for damages that cover not just copyright fines but also Alcon’s lost profits and reputation damage after the alleged “massive economic theft.”
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.
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.
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.