Alcon Entertainment, a production company for 2017’s Blade Runner 2049, has filed a lawsuit against Tesla and Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD), accusing the pair of misappropriating the movie’s brand. More specifically, Tesla is alleged to have fed images from the movie into an artificial intelligence (AI) image generator to produce unlicensed images for promotional use.
The complaint, filed in the California federal court on 21 October, accuses Tesla and CEO Elon Musk of using the AI-generated photos to promote the Robotaxi during their We, Robot event earlier in the month. WBD is also named for allegedly facilitating the partnership. This news comes shortly following the company’s criticism over apparently ripping off designs from 2004’s I, Robot.
During the event, Musk hosted a presentation featuring an image of a figure dressed in a trench coat overlooking the ruins of a city. This image was an actual still taken from Blade Runner 2049, which Alcon Entertainment claims was digitally manipulated via an AI image generator to avoid licensing rights.
“Any prudent brand considering any Tesla partnership has to take Musk’s massively amplified, highly politicised, capricious and arbitrary behaviour, which sometimes veers into hate speech, into account,” stated Alcon, adding that they “did not want [the movie] to be affiliated with Musk.”
The lawsuit also refers to an agreement made for WBD to lease out or license studio space and access to Tesla for the event, with Alcon alleging that the deal included promotional material allowing Tesla to affiliate its products with WBD, stating that it wasn’t informed of this until the day of the event.
According to the complaint, Musk had reached out to WBD intending to associate the Robotaxi with the film, which in turn requested clearance directly from Alcon due to international rights. When the producer refused, Musk instead resorted to creating the AI-generated images.
The lawsuit currently remains in progress, with Alcon seeking unspecified damages, alongside a court order prohibiting Tesla from distributing the promotional materials in question.
Kevin is a reformed PC Master Race gamer with a penchant for franchise “duds” like Darksiders III and Dead Space 3. He has made it his life-long mission to play every single major game release – lest his wallet dies trying.
Natalie
