Alcon Entertainment accuses Elon Musk of feeding Blade Runner 2049 imagery into an AI generator. Voight-Kampff test pending…
The supposed AI-generated futuristic image used during the Tesla Robotaxi Unveil presentation(Image credit: Tesla)
Alcon Entertainment is suing the world's richest man, Elon Musk, his company, Tesla, and Warner Bros Discovery for purportedly using imagery from its movie, Blade Runner 2049.
Court documents obtained by the BBC reveal that the dispute stems from Alcon's refusal to grant Musk and Tesla "all permissions" to use imagery from Blade Runner 2049, for the launch of the Tesla Robotaxi.
The production company then accused the parties in question of feeding an AI generator imagery from the movie to create AI-generated replacements. "Defendants then used an apparently AI-generated faked image to do it all anyway."
Both the supposed AI-generated imagery in question and stills from the Harrison Ford and Ryan Gosling-fronted movie depict orange-hued dystopias. The former was displayed during Musk's presentation at the Tesla Robotaxi Unveil presentation event at Warner Bros Studios, California (below).
During the presentation Musk states: "I love Blade Runner, but I dunno if we want that future," while the image in question is displayed.
Incidentally, Warner Bros distributed Blade Runner 2049 in North America, during its release in 2017.
The lawsuit also makes it clear that Alcon Entertainment does not want the Blade Runnerfranchise to be associated with Telsa, stating: "Any prudent brand considering any Tesla partnership has to take Musk's massively amplified, highly politicized, capricious and arbitrary behavior, which sometimes veers into hate speech, into account."
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The dispute comes as Alcon is gearing up for the release of Amazon Prime miniseries, Blade Runner 2099, which is currently projected to stream sometime next year. The show will be a sequel to Blade Runner 2049, further expanding the Blade Runner universe inspired by Philip K Dick's novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968).
Mike is Digital Camera World's How To Editor. He has over a decade of experience, writing for some of the biggest specialist publications including Digital Camera, Digital Photographer and PhotoPlus: The Canon Magazine. Prior to DCW, Mike was Deputy Editor of N-Photo: The Nikon Magazine and Production Editor at Wex Photo Video, where he sharpened his skills in both the stills and videography spheres. While he's an avid motorsport photographer, his skills extend to every genre of photography – making him one of Digital Camera World's top tutors for techniques on cameras, lenses, tripods, filters and other imaging equipment – as well as sharing his expertise on shooting everything from portraits and landscapes to abstracts and architecture to wildlife and, yes, fast things going around race tracks...
