ByteDance’s Seedance and Seedream pressure OpenAI on price and quality
ByteDance has released AI video generator Seedance and image model Seedream, which users and third-party platforms are rating highly for quality and cost efficiency compared to competitors. The models’ capabilities raise concerns about deepfakes, misinformation, and copyright infringement due to their hyper-realistic outputs and potential lax training data policies. This development highlights China's rapid AI advancement and prompts discussion on global AI regulation and intellectual property rights.
Key Takeaways
- Seedance launched in June and Seedream 4.0 in September; both are accessible in the U.S. through third-party platforms like Kapwing and Freepik.
- Kapwing co-founder Eric Lu said ByteDance’s models were “better in every way” in internal tests, prompting Kapwing to switch its default AI image models.
- On Freepik, Seedance costs half as many credits as Google’s Veo 3, giving ByteDance a clear price advantage.
- ByteDance’s Doubao LLM has 150 million monthly active users, according to Aicpb.com.
- TIME tested Seedream through Kapwing and generated copyrighted characters and real people, including Mickey Mouse, the Minions, Brad Pitt, and Leonardo DiCaprio.
Why It Matters
ByteDance is now competing directly at the frontier of AI video and image generation, and the immediate implication is that lower-priced models with strong quality scores are already changing product defaults at platforms like Kapwing. The competitive angle is broader than one app: the article ties ByteDance’s progress to U.S. chip export controls, Nvidia access outside China, and growing pressure on American labs as copyright scrutiny intensifies. The next signal to watch is whether more U.S. platforms follow Kapwing’s lead in switching defaults to Seedance or Seedream, and how that affects the visibility of generated deepfakes and copyrighted likenesses.
Read full article at time.com
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