{"id":229805,"date":"2025-09-15T22:35:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-15T22:35:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/229805\/"},"modified":"2025-09-15T22:35:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-15T22:35:11","slug":"warner-bros-nears-win-in-blade-runner-2049-tesla-ai-lawsuit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/229805\/","title":{"rendered":"Warner Bros. Nears Win in ‘Blade Runner 2049’ Tesla AI Lawsuit"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tSome claims in a novel lawsuit from a production company for Blade Runner 2049, accusing Tesla<\/a> of feeding images from the movie into an artificial intelligence image generator to create unlicensed promotional materials and Warner Bros.<\/a> Discovery of facilitating the alleged infringement, have been dismissed.<\/p>\n

\n\tTesla\u2019s partnership with Warner Bros. Discovery<\/a> to promote its robotaxi at a glitzy unveiling, which was done from a studio lot last year, sparked the lawsuit.\u00a0At the presentation, Elon Musk<\/a> reached the stage in what he called a \u201ccybercab\u201d before showing an image of a male figure wearing a trench coat who\u2019s surveying the abandoned ruins of a city bathed in a misty, orange light. Alcon Entertainment<\/a>, the production company, alleged that the image was intended to be understood as an actual still from Blade Runner 2049\u2018s sequence of Ryan Gosling\u2019s character exploring a ruined Las Vegas.<\/p>\n

\n\tAmong the unsettled legal questions the case asks is whether the creation of a visual by an AI image generator by copying a portion of a copyrighted work without a license constitutes copyright infringement.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the order, the court dismissed claims seeking to hold Warner Bros. Discovery responsible for Tesla\u2019s use of the photos. It said the accusation that the studio handed over high resolution images of the movie to the Musk-owned company for the event \u201cisn\u2019t supported by allegations.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAnother claim alleging that Warner Bros. Discovery had a duty to stop Tesla from infringing Alcon\u2019s intellectual property was also not allowed to proceed. Alcon had directed the studio to stop Tesla from using images from Blade Runner 2049 at the event. Still, the request didn\u2019t give it the ability to actually stop Tesla from doing so regardless of whether it responded in a way that Alcon understood to mean that it would honor the ask, according to the order.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAllowing Musk and Tesla to \u2018pick and choose\u2019 content from a library does not amount to Warner having a right to stop, limit, or supervise\u201d them,\u201d Wu wrote in the ruling issued on Sept. 11. <\/p>\n

\n\tTesla was denied permission to use stills from Blade Runner 2049 for the event just hours before the presentations was set to begin. The lawsuit alleged that the company responded by feeding images of the movie into an AI image generator, undermining its intellectual property rights.<\/p>\n

\n\tAlso an obstacle for Alcon: it doesn\u2019t appear that the studio or Tesla directly benefited from the alleged infringement, the order said.<\/p>\n

\n\tAlcon will have one more chance to fix claims for direct and vicarious copyright infringement. Discovery may prove helpful with the company finding its footing on these allegations.<\/p>\n

\n\tWarner Bros. Discovery still faces a claim for contributory infringement, which accuses the studio of facilitating the alleged misconduct. In April, the court denied Tesla\u2019s bid<\/a> to dismiss a claim for direct copyright infringement, pointing to \u201cseveral similarities\u201d between the promotional materials that Tesla used and stills from the movie that were allegedly infringed upon.<\/p>\n

\n\tPart of Alcon\u2019s motivations for continuing to pursue the lawsuit relates to an upcoming TV series based on the movie.<\/p>\n

\n\tAsked what the company expects to win in the case at a hearing earlier this year, a lawyer for Alcon responded, \u201cPart of what is happening here is my client\u201d has to \u201cmake clear that it has distance from some of the parties involved here.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Some claims in a novel lawsuit from a production company for Blade Runner 2049, accusing Tesla of feeding…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":229806,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[691,124040,738,66,158,7829,67,132,68,27281,1021],"class_list":{"0":"post-229805","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-alcon-entertainment","10":"tag-artificial-intelligence","11":"tag-elon-musk","12":"tag-technology","13":"tag-tesla","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-us","17":"tag-warner-bros-discovery","18":"tag-warner-bros"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115210703826696109","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=229805"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229805\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/229806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=229805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=229805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=229805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}