Producers of Denis Villeneuve's 2017 Blade Runner sequel, Blade Runner 2049, have sued Elon Musk over his use of imagery from the film to promote the new Tesla robotaxi, which the billionaire unveiled last week.
As The New York Times reports, Alcon Entertainment had denied Musk's request to use images from the movie as part of the October 10 marketing event held at the Warner Bros. Studios lot in Burbank, CA, where the unveiling of the autonomous Cybercab took place. "He did it anyway," the lawsuit alleges.
Warner Bros. Discovery and Tesla are both named as defendants in the suit, filed today in the US District Court in Los Angeles, CA. The movie and television company (backed by FedEx founder Frederick W. Smith) claims that, while Musk didn't use exact Blade Runner 2049 visuals, the event showcased "AI-generated images mirroring scenes from Blade Runner 2049, including one featuring a Ryan Gosling lookalike."
The legal complaint referred to the billionaire's use of artificial intelligence tools to create replica(nt)s of scenes from the film "a bad-faith and intentionally malicious gambit," citing Musk's misappropriation of the Blade Runner 2049 brand to sell Teslas.
In the filing, representatives for Alcon also compared the incident to Scarlett Johansson's recent lawsuit against OpenAI, a startup that used a voice unmistakably similar to hers for a virtual assistant called "Sky" despite the actor's refusal to grant the licensing request. That debacle followed Johansson's 2023 case against an AI app for using her likeness in an ad without consent.