“This was clearly all a bad faith and intentionally malicious gambit.”
Ripped Off
The production company behind the sci-fi blockbuster “Blade Runner 2049” is suing Tesla and its CEO Elon Musk for copyright infringement.
In the lawsuit, the company asserts that AI-generated stills used in promotional material related to Tesla’s “We, Robot” event — the site of the disastrous debut of its robotaxi project — were clearly ripping off the movie.
The production company, which is called Alcon Entertainment, didn’t beat around the bush while actively distancing itself from Musk and his abrasive, racist antics.
“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,” the lawsuit reads.
Malicious Gambit
Worse yet, Alcon — and Warner Bros Discovery, which is joining it as a plaintiff — allege that Tesla asked for permission to use a “Blade Runner 2049” still but was turned down, suggesting the EV maker knowingly infringed on the company’s copyright by bastardizing its own version using an AI image generator.
The image “was clearly intended to read visually either as an actual still image from ‘BR2049’s iconic sequence of [protagonist] K exploring the ruined Las Vegas, or as a minimally stylized copy of one,” Alcon alleges.
According to the lawsuit, Musk “personally became aware of Alcon’s permission denials and express objections” to using the images, but “did it anyway.”
In short, it sounds bad for Tesla. And given Musk’s well-documented infatuation for science fiction, the accusations are bound to sting. The billionaire has long professed his love for the “Blade Runner” franchise, often invoking it when discussing the company’s divisive Cybertruck.
Bad Faith
Tesla’s “We, Robot” event saw the company show off an early prototype of its “Cybercab” robotaxi — which, as far as we can tell, is currently more of a pipe dream than an actual production vehicle.
“It was hardly coincidental that the only specific Hollywood film which Musk actually discussed to pitch his new, fully autonomous, AI-driven cybercab was ‘BR2049’ — a film which just happens to feature a strikingly designed, artificially intelligent, fully autonomous car throughout the story,” Alcon wrote in its lawsuit.
“This was clearly all a bad faith and intentionally malicious gambit by Defendants to make the otherwise stilted and stiff content of the joint WBD-Tesla event more attractive to the global audience and to misappropriate ‘BR2049’s brand to help sell Teslas,” the document reads.
It’s not just Alcon, either. Alex Proyas, the director behind the 2004 sci-fi blockbuster “I, Robot,” also accused Musk of ripping off his ideas, tweeting “Hey Elon, can I have my designs back please?”
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