I'm really glad LeBron's lawyers reportedly sent a cease and desist letter to Interlink AI. Cuz if they hadn't I would've never seen this video:
Interlink AI, part of the larger AI-generation platform FlickUp, sent this message to their AI Discord community.
From 404 Media:
404 Media confirmed with Jason Stacks, the founder of FlickUp, that this player was LeBron James: 'A couple weeks ago, we received a cease and desist letter from LeBron James' attorney about one of our creators, Interlink AI. In collaboration with Interlink, we had been promoting an AI model trained on LeBron James and a few other iconic basketball players. Within 30 minutes of receiving the cease and desist, we made the decision to remove all realistic people from Interlink AI's software. Generative AI is the "wild west" when it comes to copyright & IP, but we're committed to being on the right side of that change.'
The cease and desist "came from Grubman Shire Meiselas & Sacks on behalf of LeBron James," according to Stacks. FlickUp immediately removed the AI models in response. Meta has suspended the accounts who posted the videos on Instagram (which had racked up millions of views).
The Interlink Discord contained step-by-step instructions for how to make videos of James, and also has a 'wins' channel, where users bragged about getting 50 Cent to like the James/Curry/Diddy prison sexual assault video. That specific video racked up at least 6.2 million views on Instagram. Because of the popularity of AI-generated content featuring NBA players, Interlink launched series of models based directly on basketball players, including James, Curry, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, and Nikola Jokiฤ, as well as models for other celebrities like Elon Musk, Mr. Beast, Drake, and Kanye West.
Usually we see threats of legal action like this when it comes to sexual AI-generated content, but this is one of the first times a big-time celeb has come after AI generators simply for non-consensual use of their likeness.
Glad to know these videos are fake though. Here I really thought LeBron had given birth!
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