According to the New York Times (NYT) and Variety on the 21st local time, Hollywood filmmaker Alcorn Entertainment filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Musk, Tesla and Warner Bros. Discovery in federal court in Los Angeles (LA).
Alcon, the producer of the 2017 SF film “Blade Runner 2049,” claimed that the core image of “Blade Runner 2049” was used without permission among Musk’s presentation materials at a Tesla robotaxi public event held at Warner Bros. Studios in LA on the 10th.
“The day before the event, when Warner Bros. asked for permission to use the image at a Tesla event, Musk used a similar image synthesized with artificial intelligence instead of the same image as the movie,” Alcon said.
In fact, Musk showed a desolate image of a future city at a robotaxi event at the time, showing a man looking at a building forest.
Alcon claims that the image copied the scene in which the main character “K” (Ryan Gosling) in the movie looks at the desolate orange Las Vegas cityscape while wearing a trench coat.
Alcon also pointed out that fully self-driving cars continued to appear in the film, adding, “It is no coincidence that Musk stole the film’s image.”
“In addition to commercial issues, Musk himself is more of a problem,” he said, adding, “If we disagree with Musk’s extreme political and social views, a potential brand tie-up with Tesla could be even more of a problem.”
In addition, the company said in its complaint that it is in talks with other car brands over its new TV series “Blade Runner 2099,” which is currently being produced by Amazon Prime Video, and that Tesla’s use of similar images could hamper such negotiations..
EJ SONG
US ASIA JOURNAL