Under pressure from Hollywood, TikTok agrees to “maintain strong guardrails” for AI content

On TikTok, AI Tom Cruise’s days may be numbered.

The app’s parent company, ByteDance, has announced that it has reached a “Memorandum of Understanding” with the Motion Picture Association. After drawing the MPA’s ire due to the widespread proliferation of AI deepfakes on TikTok, ByteDance has agreed to “maintain strong guardrails” that are designed to protect the intellectual property associated with Hollywood’s biggest stars and franchises.

The IP protections build on advances that were incorporated into Seedream 5.0 Pro and Seedance 2.5, the newest editions of ByteDance’s generative AI models. ByteDance will work alongside the MPA as it continues to integrate those models into apps like TikTok, CapCut, and the U.S.-based service known as TikTok USDS Joint Venture.

Negotiations between ByteDance and the MPA stemmed from a cease-and-desist letter that the MPA — which represents most of Hollywood’s biggest studios — sent to TikTok in February. The MPA issued the notice in response to a spate of Seedance-generated videos that featured deepfaked depictions of recognizable pop culture characters and actors. In one memorable clip, deepfake Tom Cruise fought deepfake Brad Pitt.

The MPA demanded that ByteDance stop using Hollywood IP to train its AI models. By agreeing to the Memorandum of Understanding, ByteDance is promising to work with major studios to adjust its technological innovations.

“Today’s agreement illustrates our belief that copyright is a cornerstone of the film and television industry – and reinforces our commitment to protect creative content,” said MPA Chairman and CEO Charles Rivkin in a statement. “For the past several months, we have had constructive engagement with ByteDance to implement meaningful guardrails on Seedance and Seedream, and this MOU reflects our shared determination to continue our work together to further fortify those guardrails.”

Though ByteDance is playing nice with Hollywood, don’t expect to see AI-generated content disappear on TikTok. The app is putting Seedance to work for brands and positioning the model’s creations as film festival fare, so ByteDance is still investing heavily in generative AI.

Those genAI videos cause headaches for studios when they get out of control, which is why the Memorandum of Understanding is so important. TikTok, which recently signed a landmark deal with Disney, is eager to bring more pop culture characters into its videos. The MPA agreement ensures that those crossovers will be done the right way.