ByteDance’s AI Ambitions Are Being Hampered by Compute Restraints and Copyright Concerns

Move implicit Sora 2, there’s a blistery caller AI video exemplary successful town.

In aboriginal February, ByteDance unveiled Seedance 2.0, a large upgrade to its flagship video model, which had antecedently remained reasonably obscure. Its almighty capabilities instantly shocked the AI ecosystem successful China, adjacent among audiences who had erstwhile been skeptical of AI-generated video and viewed the exertion chiefly arsenic a mode to nutrient slop.

Feng Ji, the laminitis of Game Science, the workplace that developed China’s planetary deed video crippled Black Myth: Wukong, wrote online that helium was “deeply shocked” by the model’s abilities and believed Seedance 2.0 would airs important challenges to China’s existent copyright regulations and contented moderation systems. Pan Tianhong, who leads a Chinese nonrecreational video accumulation workplace with implicit 15 cardinal followers connected societal media, posted a video successful which helium said Seedance 2.0 is importantly amended than immoderate video-making models that came earlier it. “It thinks similar a director,” Pan said.

However, astir radical can’t get their hands connected the exemplary astatine this infinitesimal due to the fact that entree remains reasonably restricted. As of this week, ByteDance is lone allowing existing users of its consumer-facing AI apps successful China—the astir fashionable 1 is the chatbot app Doubao, but the institution besides has a confusing constellation of lesser-known apps similar Jimeng, Xiaoyunque, and Spark—to acquisition Seedance 2.0. All these apps are for the Chinese home marketplace only, preventing radical extracurricular the state from investigating the exemplary themselves. (The restrictions person prompted immoderate savvy radical successful China to resell their ByteDance accounts to anxious aboriginal AI adopters overseas.)

But determination are signs that the exemplary mightiness go much accessible soon. This week, ByteDance updated its API level and disclosed the projected pricing of Seedance 2.0: A 15-second video, the longest it tin make close now, would outgo somewhat much than $2 to make, Chinese work IT Home estimated. ByteDance inactive hasn’t opened up API entree to third-party developers, but that should beryllium connected the horizon.

Afra Wang, writer of the Substack newsletter Concurrent and a adjacent perceiver of the US-China AI landscape, tells maine that Seedance 2.0 is different absorbing illustration of however the 2 countries person taken diverging paths. Even earlier the merchandise of Seedance 2.0, immoderate of the astir established video-making AI tools successful the world, specified arsenic Kling AI, were developed by Chinese companies. “​​China hasn’t produced immoderate decent AI coding tool, which is wherefore Chinese radical are each babelike connected Claude Code oregon Codex; but erstwhile it comes to video AI, China is miles up of the US,” Wang says.

But each the hype aside, Seedance is moving into 2 superior problems. Weeks into its release, ByteDance is facing a compute bottleneck that is causing the exemplary to instrumentality hours to make a azygous video. Meanwhile, large movie studios, including Disney, Netflix, and Paramount, person each sent ByteDance cease-and-desist letters alleging that Seedance 2.0’s outputs are infringing connected their copyrighted works. ByteDance did not instantly instrumentality a petition for comment.

The Bandwidth Problem

Even if you get entree to a ByteDance AI app, it’s inactive acold from casual to make a video with Seedance 2.0, due to the fact that excessively galore radical are trying to bash the aforesaid thing, and ByteDance has yet to supply capable compute resources for everyone.

When I tried to make a clip with 1 of ByteDance’s apps this week, it told maine that I was fig 90,985 successful the queue, and it would instrumentality astir 4 hours to make a five-second video. After waiting for 2 hours, the app told maine I present had six much to go. At that point, I decided to conscionable spell to bed.