Video of Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise ‘fighting’ causes Hollywood panic: ‘It’s over for us’

“I hate to say it. It’s over for us.”

That was the take by “Deadpool & Wolverine” scribe Rhett Reese when he saw the deepfake video featuring Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt that has Hollywood up in arms this week. 

The viral video, which sees the two A-listers engaging in hand to hand fisticuffs on a rooftop — the plot being that Pitt is angry over Cruise killing Jeffrey Epstein, who “knew too much about our Russia operation” — was made using Seedance 2.0, a newly-released AI tool from ByteDance, the China-based parent company of TikTok.

As with OpenAI’s Sora, Seedance 2.0 is sparking more concerns about an AI video generator running roughshod over copyright rules. It was enough to warrant a response from the Motion Picture Association (no small feat, given the organization is loathe to weigh in publicly on AI matters), whose chairman and CEO Charles Rivkin said in a statement sent to P6H:

“In a single day, the Chinese AI service Seedance 2.0 has engaged in unauthorized use of U.S. copyrighted works on a massive scale. 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.”

The tool was formally unveiled Thursday morning in the U.S. after it lit up Chinese social media for the past week. Users have also posted remixes of “Avengers: Endgame’s” climatic battle (in which Thanos apologizes for snapping away half the universe) and another one that featured a Godzilla vs Optimus Prime fight (would watch, tbh). 

In addition to copyright fears, Seedance 2.0 is sending a chill down the spine of creatives who are already fearful of their jobs being lost to AI prompters — and it strikes a particular chord given that AI is front and center in the labor negotiations between the Big 3 unions and the studios.

Reese’s shock response to the video was met with some pushback that he was being too flippant about it. He expanded in a subsequent post: “I was blown away by the Pitt v Cruise video because it is so professional. That’s exactly why I’m scared. My glass half empty view is that Hollywood is about to be revolutionized/decimated.” (Simu Liu was less impressed with AI’s fight choreography skills: “Anyone who has ever watched a martial arts movie knows this is absolutely dogsh-t.”)

It’s not the first time Cruise has been memorably deepfaked. Back in 2022, AI startup Metaphysic was behind a popular TikTok account that posted Tom Cruise deepfake videos. When I was at Axios, Metaphysic founder Tom Graham had told me that he did it as a way to make a point about the threat of deepfake, and to force Congress to act on regulation. 

We’re betting that ByteDance’s intentions here aren’t so noble. They did not get back to us when asked for a comment.