The recent surge in consumer appetite for generative video tools has collided with a sharper pushback from rights holders, regulators and performers. In late 2025, OpenAI’s invite‑only Sora 2 launched and went viral almost immediately, underscoring the scale and speed at which AI video apps can break into mainstream usage.
That rapid uptake has intensified debates about consent, copyright and the limits of training data. As lawsuits, legislation and commercial dealmaking multiply, the industry faces a pivotal choice: continue fast product rollouts that risk legal and reputational harm, or slow down to build rights, consent and licensing into the foundation of AI video technology.
How Sora 2 and other apps ignited a rights backlash
OpenAI’s Sora 2 hit the lines after an invite‑only launch around Sept. 30, Oct. 3, 2025. Appfigures estimated roughly 56,000 iOS installs on day one and about 164,000 installs in the first 48 hours; within days Sora 2 shot to the top of Apple’s App Store, reflecting enormous consumer demand for easy AI video creation.
That scale made problems visible fast. Users and journalists quickly found Sora 2 could generate videos that resembled copyrighted characters and public figures, prompting OpenAI to promise new controls for rights‑holders. The rapid adoption reinforced rights‑holders’ argument that existing protections lag behind mainstream consumer use.
Other vendors have seen similar growth and scrutiny. Runway’s earlier disclosures about training datasets and the proliferation of consumer AI‑video tools show a pattern: models trained on massive, mixed corpora, released to millions of users, then tested against legal and ethical boundaries in public.
Studios strike back: litigation as a primary lever
Major studios moved quickly in 2025 to use litigation as a blunt tool against perceived misuse. On June 11, 2025, Disney and NBCUniversal/Universal filed high‑profile suits against Midjourney, alleging large‑scale scraping and unauthorized use of copyrighted characters. Warner Bros. later joined the ranks of plaintiffs pursuing similar claims.
Studios framed the cases in stark terms. As Disney general counsel Horacio Gutierrez put it, “Piracy is piracy, and the fact that it's done by an AI company does not make it any less infringing.” That line captures why rights owners are pursuing injunctions and damages: they want immediate remedies and industry‑wide precedent.
If plaintiffs succeed in major claims, courts could order retraining, data segregation, or other remedies that fundamentally change how vendors collect and use training data. Observers note that such rulings could ripple across the industry and reshape what datasets are considered lawful for commercial AI services.
Publicity rights, voice suits, and emerging legal tools
Beyond copyright, performers and creators are turning to the right of publicity to fight unconsented clones. A July 10, 2025 decision in the S.D.N.Y. allowed parts of a class action by voice actors against AI voice firm Lovo to proceed, with Judge Oetken finding viable right‑of‑publicity claims and permitting amended copyright claims.
That ruling reflects a broader trend: more than 30 U.S. states recognize publicity rights, either statutorily or under common law, and courts are increasingly open to publicity claims where mimicry causes commercial or reputational harm. Legal scholars and plaintiffs argue publicity law is a practical remedy when copyright doctrine offers limited protection.
For AI video apps, publicity claims are significant because they can target likeness, name and voice even when the underlying content isn’t a literal copyrighted work. That gives performers and public figures an immediate legal lever to demand takedowns, damages or consent-based agreements.
Legislation and regulatory pressure: TAKE IT DOWN and beyond
Legislators have also stepped into the breach. On May 19, 2025, the federal TAKE IT DOWN Act (S.146 / Pub. L. 119‑12) was enacted to criminalize and require rapid removal of nonconsensual intimate AI deepfakes (NCII), while mandating 48‑hour platform takedown procedures. The law won praise for protecting victims and prompted free‑speech and privacy debates about speed and scope of removals.
TAKE IT DOWN demonstrates how lawmakers can impose operational requirements, fast notice‑and‑remove windows and criminal penalties, that directly affect platform workflows and moderation costs. It also signals lawmakers may follow with broader measures aimed at training data, consent frameworks, and provenance transparency.
Combined with active litigation, legislation increases compliance complexity for AI video apps. Vendors now must navigate federal takedown duties, state publicity regimes and the possibility of court‑level injunctions affecting product features or data pipelines.
Industry responses: licensing, opt‑outs and contract remedies
Faced with lawsuits and bad publicity, some companies have moved toward commercial fixes. Synthesia, for example, admitted past moderation gaps after stock avatars were misused in propaganda and later struck a licensing deal with Shutterstock while instituting opt‑out and compensation measures for actors.
OpenAI has responded to Sora 2 backlash by promising rights‑holder controls; Sam Altman said rights‑holders will be given “granular control” and “we will let rightsholders decide how to proceed.” That kind of feature, fine‑grained control over character generation, aims to balance creative use with rights protection.
Other industry responses include revenue‑share proposals, more robust avatar verification systems, and contractual consent mechanisms. Those fixes help vendors reduce legal risk and restore trust with performers and studios, but they can be costly and operationally complex to implement at scale.
Misuse cases and the reputational toll
Real‑world misuse has sharpened the debate. An Indian YouTube channel, “AI Bollywood Ishq,” generated hundreds of AI videos and amassed over 16.5 million views, illustrating how deepfake clips can propagate and be recycled as training data. Such scale alarms rights holders and platform moderators.
The industry has also seen synthetic performer controversies. The fully synthetic actor Tilly Norwood (Particle6 / Xicoia) sparked condemnation from SAG‑AFTRA and performers in Sept, Oct 2025, who argued that synthetic performers threaten jobs and may be built on unlicensed human performances.
High‑profile incidents magnify reputational risk and encourage unions and guilds to push for contractual protections. Recent SAG‑AFTRA agreements, negotiated during the 2024, 2025 video‑game labor actions, established informed‑consent rules, minimum pay for digital replicas and the right to suspend consent for digital replicas, creating templates for future deals.
What regulators, courts and companies should consider next
The convergence of litigation, legislation and product launches suggests a multi‑front strategy is already taking shape. Rights holders are using three levers, litigation, regulatory pressure, and commercial deals, to force vendors to change practices and internalize the costs of consent and licensing.
Technically, companies must think about provenance metadata, opt‑out registries, filtered training pipelines and clearer consent UIs. Runway’s earlier disclosures about training on roughly 240 million images and 6.4 million video clips show how opaque datasets can become flashpoints; better documentation and licensing will be essential to defense and compliance.
Practically, vendors that ignore legal and labor trends risk injunctions that could require retraining on licensed corpora, metadata protections, or even business model shifts toward licensing- and revenue‑share regimes. The market rewards speed, but the legal environment increasingly rewards care.
AI video apps have opened new creative possibilities, but their rapid expansion has collided with a chorus of legal, commercial and ethical objections. From blockbuster studio lawsuits to publicity claims by performers and new federal laws like the TAKE IT DOWN Act, the ecosystem is being reshaped by actors demanding control over likenesses and copyrighted characters.
The industry’s response will define the next phase: whether companies build durable consent, licensing and provenance systems into product design, or face protracted litigation and restrictive court orders. For creators, studios and consumers alike, the central question remains the same, who decides how likeness and character can be used in a world where synthetic video is easy to create?
