LOS ANGELES (CN) — The studio that produced Blade Runner 2049 claims in a lawsuit Monday that it shot down Tesla’s request to use a still image from the sci-fi film in the promotion of the company’s new self-driving taxi. But Tesla and its owner, Elon Musk, went ahead and used an AI-generated recreation of one of the movie’s iconic scenes during a public sales pitch event for the vehicle earlier this month.
The forged image, the studio claims, was used as the second slide in Elon Musk’s Oct. 10 presentation of the company’s new Cybercab product at Warner Bros Discovery, Inc’s Burbank studio lot.
The image appeared on screen for 11 seconds — “a marketing and advertising eternity,” the plaintiffs, Alcon Entertainment, says in its complaint filed in L.A. federal court.
During that time, Musk struggled to explain why he was showing a picture from the film, according to Alcon.
“He really had no credible reason,” Alcon says in its complaint. “Musk ostensibly invited the global audience to think about the Cybercab’s possibilities in juxtaposition to BR2049’s fictional future. But it all exuded an odor of thinly contrived excuse to link Tesla’s Cybercab to strong Hollywood brands at a time when Tesla and Musk are on the outs with Hollywood. Which of course is exactly what it was.”
Tesla, Musk and Warner Bros. Discovery, Inc. are all listed as defendants in the suit.
Musk was attracted to the image because of the movie’s depiction of a fictional self-driving, artificially intelligent car, Alcon claims.
The studio says the defendants’ use of images reminiscent of the film in their marketing campaign was an intentionally malicious move that violated copyright and false endorsement laws, caused potential confusion with other car brands Alcon is in partnership talks with during the production of a new Blade Runner TV series, and may also be a stain on the studio’s reputation if it is perceived as being connected to Musk himself.
“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. If, as here, a company or its principals do not actually agree with Musk’s extreme political and social views, then a potential brand affiliation with Tesla is even more issue fraught. Alcon did not want BR2049 to be affiliated with Musk, Tesla, or any Musk company, for all of these reasons,” Alcon says in its complaint.
That unwanted brand affiliation didn’t just last for 11 seconds in the room where Musk showed the image during his speech. Thanks to livestreams of the event, reposts on the Musk-owned X, formerly Twitter, that reached millions of views, “the false affiliation between BR2049 and Tesla is irreparably entangled in the global media tapestry, all as defendants knew would inevitably happen, and amplifying the damage and confusion risks,” Alcon writes in its complaint.
Alcon is requesting a jury trial, damages, and an injunction to prevent the defendants from using the image and require them to impound all copies of the image, including digital copies, records and documents.
Musk has thrown his weight, time and money behind acquiring and then running X. Critics blame Musk for turning the platform into a toxic, chaotic den of misinformation and conspiracy theories. Musk has previously posted conspiracy theories himself and feuded with politicians around the world.
Musk has also thrown millions of dollars behind Donald Trump’s bid to regain the U.S. presidency in November.
He also has been feuding with California regulators ever since his Tesla factory in Fremont was temporarily closed during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. Earlier this year, he moved SpaceX’s headquarters from Hawthorne, California, to Texas because of a new state law that bars school districts from notifying parents of students who want to change their gender identity.
Earlier this month, Musk’s rocket company, SpaceX, sued the California Coastal Commission over its refusal to allow more Falcon 9 launches at Vandenberg Space Force Base, a federal enclave and the world’s second busiest spaceport.
Neither Alcon nor Tesla immediately responded to requests for comment.