Blade Runner 2049 creators sue Elon Musk, Tesla, and Warner Bros over robotaxi event

The producers of Blade Runner 2049 filed a lawsuit against Elon Musk and Tesla for copyright infringement and false endorsement over Tesla's robotaxi event.

Blade Runner 2049 creators sue Elon Musk, Tesla, and Warner Bros over robotaxi event
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A production company for Blade Runner 2049 has officially filed a lawsuit against Tesla, Warner Bros Discovery, and Elon Musk over the recent robotaxi event held at a Warner Bros studio lot.

Blade Runner 2049 creators sue Elon Musk, Tesla, and Warner Bros over robotaxi event 5651651156

The lawsuit was filed in federal court and states Elon Musk and his electric vehicle company misappropriated the movie's brand with promotional material used at the company's recent robotaxi event. That company is Alcon Entertainment, and according to reports, it specifically denied a request to use any material from the film at the recent Tesla event. However, according to the lawsuit, marketing material that was used affiliated the robotaxis with Blade Runner 2049.

The lawsuit calls out a specific image of a male figure wearing a trenchcoat as he overlooks what appears to be a ruined city cloaked in an orange hue. The lawsuit states, "the image was clearly intended to read visually" as a natural steel from Blade Runner 2049, specifically the scene where Ryan Gosling's character is overlooking a ruined Las Vegas. Alcon Entertainment claims Tesla took the original image from Blade Runner 2049, fed it into an AI image generator, and requested the sophisticated software to create a similar image to avoid copyright infringement.

"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," states the complaint. "Alcon did not want BR2049 to be affiliated with Musk."

The complaint states that Musksk wanted to associate the event with Blade Runner 2049, which was distributed by Warner Bros Discovery when it was released. More specifically, Musk wanted to use a still image from the movie, which spurred communication between Alcon Entertainment, Tesla, and Warner Bros for rights to be cleared. However, the producers of the movie denied the request, which the lawsuit claims prompted the creation of the alleged AI-generated images.

"All of the Defendants participated in its creation, and in its display in the presentation at the event, from a WBDI-owned building and studio lot, on WBDI-owned video screens and otherwise using WBDI-owned technology infrastructure, operated by or in conjunction with Tesla employees, all acting in whole or in part subject to the direction and control of Musk," the complaint states

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Jak joined the TweakTown team in 2017 and has since reviewed 100s of new tech products and kept us informed daily on the latest science, space, and artificial intelligence news. Jak's love for science, space, and technology, and, more specifically, PC gaming, began at 10 years old. It was the day his dad showed him how to play Age of Empires on an old Compaq PC. Ever since that day, Jak fell in love with games and the progression of the technology industry in all its forms.

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