‘Blade Runner 2049’ producer accuses Musk and Tesla of circumventing copyright with AI imagery

In Brief

In an interesting variation of the usual “stop stealing our stuff” lawsuit already deployed dozens of times against AI companies, today brings a more nuanced form of alleged theft. Alcon Entertainment, a production company behind “Blade Runner 2049,” is suing Tesla, Elon Musk, and Warner Bros Digital for what they claim is a willful circumvention of its IP rights, according to Hollywood Reporter.

Musk had asked to use imagery from the film to promote Tesla’s latest futuristic concept cars at their unveiling on a Warners studio lot. When Alcon wouldn’t agree to provide the rights through Warner, the suit alleges that Tesla, at Musk’s direction, used that imagery as raw material to duplicate it using an AI model. He then showed this fake Blade Runner imagery while talking about the film itself, as you see above.

The lawsuit proposes unspecified damages and also banning Tesla from further distributing the disputed promotional materials.