‘Tom Cruise’ and ‘Brad Pitt’ fight over Epstein in viral AI video created with new Chinese tool

• The internet is again abuzz with a new Chinese AI model.
• Seedance 2.0, ByteDance’s new video-generation tool, can create hyperrealistic videos.
• Users are making videos of Hollywood actors, raising copyright concerns.

In a new viral AI video, Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise pummel each other on a rooftop in a cinematic action sequence.

It’s not a trailer for a new blockbuster, and it’s not actually Pitt and Cruise, though it looks a lot like them. The video is so realistic, in fact, that the clearest sign it’s made with AI is the dialogue.

“You killed Jeffrey Epstein, you animal! He was a good man!” Pitt says as he punches Cruise.

“He knew too much…” Cruise replies.

You can see why Hollywood’s most prominent trade organization is not happy about it.

The scene was created using Seedance 2.0, a new AI video-generation model released Thursday by ByteDance, the Chinese parent company of TikTok.

The tool and the hyper-realistic videos of Hollywood actors and characters that users are creating with it have gone viral in China and are now catching the attention of Americans.

“It’s happening fast,” Elon Musk said in response to a video generated using Seedance and posted to X, a reference to the speed at which artificial intelligence is advancing.

“We’re cooked,” another X user said.

The reaction from Americans is reminiscent of the buzz around DeepSeek, a Chinese company that unveiled an AI reasoning model in January last year that rivaled OpenAI’s ChatGPT and other top models, stunning the biggest names in Silicon Valley and ratcheting up the competition between the United States and China in the race to dominate AI innovation.

Seedance 2.0 is another shot across the bow of American AI companies. Its multimodal capabilities span text, image, audio, and video inputs and give creators control over metrics such as lighting, shadows, and camera movement.

In another viral scene, a deepfake version of Walter White — of Breaking Bad fame — points directly at the viewer and says, “You think you’re in control.” It’s a line that feels less like dialogue and more like a taunt.

The uncanny representations of Hollywood actors, as well as characters from the Avengers and other major movie franchises, immediately raised copyright concerns.

The Motion Picture Association, the trade group representing major Hollywood studios and streaming services, released a statement on Thursday accusing ByteDance of infringement on a “massive scale” in a “single day.”

“By launching a service that operates without meaningful safeguards against infringement, ByteDance is disregarding well-established copyright law that protects the rights of creators and underpins millions of American jobs. ByteDance should immediately cease its infringing activity,” Charlie Rivkin, the chairman and CEO of the MPA, said in a statement.

OpenAI’s AI video generation tool, Sora, which can also create AI versions of actors and characters, has also raised copyright issues.

Like with so many of AI’s latest tools, however, it can be hard to put the genie back in the bottle.