Blade Runner 2049 production company Alcon Entertainment is suing Tesla, Elon Musk, and Warner Bros. Discovery over their alleged use of AI-generated imagery based on the film in a promotional event for Tesla’s new Cybercab. The suit, available via Variety, claims the defendants opted for the AI image after Alcon “refused all permissions and adamantly objected to Defendants suggesting any affiliation between BR2049 and Tesla, Musk or any Musk-owned company.”
Tesla’s We, Robot event faced some earlier backlash over the presence of Tesla robots, which were implied to be AI-driven and autonomous but were more likely being controlled by human operators. But this is much more serious: The lawsuit claims Tesla asked for permission to use a still image from Blade Runner 2049 for the event, and when Alcon refused it simply fed images from the film into an AI image generator, along with instructions to make “a lightly stylized fake screen still from BR2049.”
That image was then used early in the Cybercab presentation, and lest anyone not make the connection Musk specifically referenced the film in his opening remarks. “I love Blade Runner, but I don’t know if we want that future,” he said. “I think we want that duster he’s wearing, but not the bleak apocalypse.”
“Musk tried awkwardly to explain why he was showing the audience a picture of BR2049 when he was supposed to be talking about his new product,” the lawsuit states.
“He really had no credible reason. 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.”
The lawsuit also notes that Blade Runner 2049 is the only Hollywood movie to be used in the Cybercab promotion even though Warner also holds the rights to all the Mad Max films. Any one of those would have been better choices if the actual point was to illustrate a really shitty future we’d all rather avoid, the suit states—reasonably, I think. But that was not the point at all: The suit’s allegation is that the whole point was to make the event “more attractive to the global audience and to misappropriate BR2049’s brand to help sell Teslas.”
Making matters worse for Alcon is Musk’s “massively amplified, highly politicized, capricious and arbitrary behavior, which sometimes veers into hate speech.” Alcon states in the lawsuit that it specifically did not want to be affiliated with Musk or his companies because of his behavior, which is why it not only refused to grant the use of Blade Runner 2049 material in the first place but “also expressly and clearly objected to any express or implied BR2049 affiliation with the event.”
But now it’s caught up in it regardless, across thousands of re-posts and 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,” the suit states.
This is the Blade Runner 2049 Tesla allegedly wanted to use in its We, Robot presentation:
This is what ultimately appeared in the presentation.
All told, the use of the image represents “massive economic theft,” the suit claims, not only because of the fees lost on this “unauthorized association” but also because it “muddied the waters” for potential real brand partnerships based on the upcoming Blade Runner 2049 spinoff television series.
The lawsuit asks for all copies of materials using the image as well as other “related record and documents” to be impounded by the court, and that an injunction against further use be issued. Alcon is also after damages and disgorgement of profits, legal fees, and “such other and further relief as the Court may deem just and proper.”
This isn’t the first time in recent memory that one of Musk’s companies has been sued for doing whatever the hell it wants without regard for consequences. In September, Cards Against Humanity filed a lawsuit against SpaceX for trespassing on land it owned and destroying it “with gravel, tractors, and space garbage.” In that case, not unlike this one, SpaceX allegedly made a “lowball offer” for permission to use the land and when CAH refused, it went ahead and used it anyway.
I’ve reached out to Tesla for comment and will update if I receive a reply.
