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.”
I really like there is now a legal definition Alcon has put together that any association of Musk with a brand is a risk to the brand.
This is the only way responsible corporate governance should be treating and referring to Musk, and yet so many corporations keeps an ongoing presence on X regardless of the fascist trash that is it’s mouthpiece
Make your own dystopia, Elon. Stop copying people.
He can’t. He’s not actually a visionary. But he has enough fanbois that he’s shielded from that reality.
Reminds me of Miles Bron.
He literally is making his own dystopia. It’s one where shitty dumb billionaires destroy centuries of successful democracy with good old fashion uncreative corpuption. We all get to live in it. Well except maybe immigrants, they’ll be shipped out somewhere else.
If there were any doubts that this image was supposed to reference the Blade Runner movie, the lawsuit said, Musk “erased them” by directly referencing the movie in his comments.
“You know, I love Blade Runner, but I don’t know if we want that future,” Musk said at the event. "I believe we want that duster he’s wearing, but not the, uh, not the bleak apocalypse.”
…
But producers argued that defense is “not credible” since Tesla explicitly asked to use the Blade Runner 2049 image, and there are “better” films in WBD’s library to promote Musk’s message, like the Mad Max movies.
Damn they clapped him hard on that last one
According to the complaint,
Elon Musk’s image:
Infringes on the copyright of this image from Blade Runner 2049:
The producers think the image was likely generated—“even possibly by Musk himself”—by “asking an AI image generation engine to make ‘an image from the K surveying ruined Las Vegas sequence of Blade Runner 2049,’ or some closely equivalent input direction,” the lawsuit said.
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. 🍻
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
Yeah, US has the stupid precedent concept - you just need to establish it once, to validate any future troll lawsuits
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.
@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.
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:
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.
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”.
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.
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.
Yeah, no. This is like suing someone because their picture of the sunset looks similar to yours. Obviously, the image is supposed to resemble that movie - I don’t think anyone seriously doubts that - but I don’t see any copyright infringement here.
Username checks out, you are right, except if you first ask the sunset for their picture and they refuse to give it to you you come up with an eerily similar one, even with the person in the foreground wearing the same clothes
So it would have been fine if they hadn’t asked? I don’t get your point. Like I said: I don’t think anyone denies that it’s supposed to look like it was from the movie. It’s not though. It’s similar but is not the same. I don’t see what the copyright infingement here is supposed to be. I don’t think you can own the idea of a man in a trenchcoat overlooking a city with orange filter on it.
I mean, yeah it might have been, not because that makes it okay but because of a lack of attention on the subject. Then again he also might have gotten sued after the fact like Trump with his campaign trail music he keeps using without permission.
However, Elon did ask first, and was met with the response of “no, we absolutely do not want our product associated with you or your business in any fashion.” So he then carried on to create a barely legally distinct derivative which easily calls to mind the iconic scene in question, and then name drop Blade Runner in the accompanying speech.
Imagine for a moment, you write Bill Gates and ask him if you can use his likeness for advertisement. He tells you no, absolutely not, go kick rocks. So instead you have your local AI whip you up a character - Bull Gotes, a thin, white haired, elderly, bespectacled Caucasian man who made a lot of money on his computers, which he calls Macrosoft. This might be permissible as parody, but I don’t think you’re going to win a court case if you use it in business advertising and Bill decides he has something to say about it.
I see what you’re saying, but I think in this case it’s different enough from the original artwork that, if this were to go through in court, it would open the floodgates for a ton of similar lawsuits and set a bad precedent. They absolutely acted in bad faith here, as it’s immediately obvious which scene they’re mimicking, but I just don’t see enough similarity for copyright infringement. It’s quite different from Trump using actual songs from artists without permission - this isn’t the actual scene from the movie.
There’s literally not as single common thing these images share. Afaik noone has monopoly on orange filter
One could argue it’s an uncreative derivative work not subject to a fair use exemption, and actively used in commerce to make money for Musk, while simultaneously it damages the Blade Runner brand if, as claimed, other car companies assume Tesla and BR have a relationship, or the BR brand is inextricably linked to Tesla and Musk. The fact that Tesla and WBD hurriedly sought a copyright clearance, once Tesla realized WBD didn’t have all the necessary rights, doesn’t speak well for Tesla’s position, nor does the fact that Musk referenced Blade Runner at least twice in his presentation.
the fact that Musk referenced Blade Runner at least twice in his presentation.
While specifically refering to the image
Yeah, I don’t think this goes to trial and rewrites the lawbooks or anything, but there’s enough here to litigate, and I reckon Tesla will settle to avoid going to discovery.
A man of this wealth and status childishly saying that 2049 sucks is cherry on top of my radicalization cake
I still hold 2049 as one of my best cinema-experiences of the last decade.
It’s easily one of my favorite movies, and I think the characters and themes of 2049 stay truer to the book than the original bladerunner even though the plot changed.
I doubt this will go anywhere, but I wish them luck. Go get that nonce.
They have an obligation to at least attempt to defend their copyright or risk losing it through inaction.
This is a bit different, in that it’s not a trademark claim, but rather a copyright claim. They’re saying that the still isn’t meaningfully trying to be anything other than a Blade Runner still, and Musk’s use is not protected by any sort of Fair Use. There would likely be a statue of limitations or something for the specific cause of action, but you can’t lose copyright the same way you can a trademark.
Ah, gotcha. I was mistaken.
Rich entitlement. It’s not enough to be comfortable and have the capacity to play for the rest of your life, you have to bulldoze through others because you feel entitled to their stuff too.
Musk sucks but this lawsuit is bullshit, “no you can’t have a picture of a guy in a trenchcoat with a sandstorm in the distance, we completely own that idea.”
Rich people can pay their way out of crime in the
AmericaAmerican “justice” system, so this won’t do anything to Elon Schmuck.You realize that this is a civil lawsuit right?
The only punitive action that can be taken, is monetary damages.
Unless you think that private entities, such as Alcon, should be allowed to privately prosecute criminal cases, with criminal penalties such as jail time…?
Nah, we don’t need that, we have enough bullshit as is. Lol.
They would not be the owners otherwise. This is PoliSci 101 really but we got so many more to get to this point.
