Elon Musk, his car company,\u00a0Tesla,\u00a0and\u00a0Warner Bros. Discovery\u00a0were sued Monday over their alleged artificial intelligence-fueled copyright infringement of images from the film \u201cBlade Runner 2049\u201d to promote Tesla\u2019s robotaxi concept.<\/p>\n
The\u00a0lawsuit\u00a0by the movie\u2019s producer, Alcon Entertainment, says that the mega-billionaire Musk and the other defendants requested permission to use \u201can iconic still image\u201d from \u201cBlade Runner 2049\u2033 for the Oct. 10 event hyping the\u00a0Cybercab\u00a0at Warner Bros. Discovery\u2019s studio lot in Burbank, California. That request was denied.<\/p>\n
The Cybercab is Tesla\u2019s concept of a \u201cdedicated robotaxi\u201d that the company says it wants to produce by 2027 and sell for under $30,000.<\/p>\n
\u201cAlcon refused all permissions \u201cand adamantly objected to Defendants suggesting any affiliation between BR2049 and Tesla, Musk or any Musk-owned company,\u201d the civil suit in Los Angeles federal court alleges.<\/p>\n
\u201cDefendants then used an apparently AI-generated faked image to do it all anyway,\u201d according to the suit, which says the defendant\u2019s actions constituted \u201ca massive economic theft.\u201d<\/p>\n
During the Cybercab event \u201cthis faked image\u201d was shown on the second presentation slide on a live stream for 11 seconds as Musk spoke.<\/p>\n
\u201cDuring those 11 seconds, Musk tried awkwardly to explain why he was showing the audience a picture of BR2049 when he was supposed to be talking about his new product,\u201d the suit says. \u201cHe really had no credible reason.\u201d<\/p>\n
CNBC has requested comment from Alcon and the defendants in the lawsuit, which was first reported by\u00a0The New York Times. The suit\u2019s claims include copyright infringement and false endorsement.<\/p>\n
The suit alleges that the financial impact of the misappropriation \u201cwas substantial,\u201d noting that Alcon currently is in talks with other automotive brands about potential partnerships with Alcon\u2019s \u201cBlade Runner 2099 television series currently in production.\u201d<\/p>\n
The complaint also says the \u201cproblematic Musk\u201d is an issue in the case, and that Alcon did not want its \u201cBlade Runner\u201d sequel film \u201cto be affiliated with Musk, Tesla, or any Musk company.\u201d<\/p>\n
Alcon\u2019s suit says, \u201cAny prudent brand considering any Tesla partnership has to take Musk\u2019s massively amplified, highly politicized, capricious and arbitrary behavior, which sometimes veers into hate speech, into account.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIf, as here, a company or its principals do not actually agree with Musk\u2019s extreme political and social views, then a potential brand affiliation with Tesla is even more issue- fraught,\u201d the suit said.<\/p>\n
Musk is a major backer of\u00a0Donald Trump\u2019s Republican presidential campaign, and often makes incendiary comments on X, the social media site that he owns.<\/p>\n
For example, in March he spread\u00a0baseless rumors\u00a0via X that \u201ccannibal hordes\u201d of Haitians were migrating to the U.S.<\/p>\n
Last week, Musk boosted false and debunked conspiracies about\u00a0Dominion Voting\u00a0machines used to count votes in federal and other elections.<\/p>\n
Musk has promised Tesla shareholders a robotaxi for more than a decade.<\/p>\n
However, Tesla has never produced a vehicle that is safe to use without a human ready to steer or brake at any time.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Elon Musk, his car company,\u00a0Tesla,\u00a0and\u00a0Warner Bros. Discovery\u00a0were sued Monday over their alleged artificial intelligence-fueled copyright infringement of images from the film \u201cBlade Runner 2049\u201d to promote Tesla\u2019s robotaxi concept. The\u00a0lawsuit\u00a0by the movie\u2019s producer, Alcon Entertainment, says that the mega-billionaire Musk and the other defendants requested permission to use \u201can iconic still image\u201d from \u201cBlade Runner […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":11531,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11530","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11530","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11530"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11530\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11531"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}