Fallout from Elon Musk’s uninspiring ‘Cybercab’ launch continues, after film producers sue for using certain AI-generated image
The muted reaction to Tesla’s unveiling of its ‘self driving’ robotaxi concept called Cybercab, after a decade of Elon Musk promises, took a legal turn this week.
The Associated Press reported that a production company that helped make the Ryan Gosling film “Blade Runner 2049”, has sued Tesla and its CEO Elon Musk.
The lawsuit centres over Tesla using an AI-generated images to market the long-awaiting unveiling of the two seater Cybercab.
Image credit Tesla
Alcon lawsuit
At the “We, Robot” event on 10 October at the Warner Bros. studio in Burbank, California, Elon Musk had arrived almost an hour after the unveiling was supposed to begin.
Musk then showed off Tesla’s low two-seater Cybercab, which he said was a “fully autonomous” vehicle with no steering wheel or pedals for drivers.
But investors were not impressed at the lack details and Musk’s unrealistic promise that the Cybercab would only cost $30,000, and consequently shares in Tesla fell nearly 6 percent to $238.77 the following day.
Now film production firm Alcon Entertainment has sued Tesla and Elon Musk, after it reportedly said it had refused all permissions, but Tesla allegedly used artificial intelligence to “do it all anyway” when the EV maker unveiled its long-awaited robotaxi.
After pulling up to the stage in one of the company’s “Cybercabs,” Musk gave a speech that included a brief reference to the Blade Runner movie franchise, the Associated Press noted.
As he spoke, a screen showed an image of a man in a long coat looking over an orange-tinted ruined city. Alcon claims it resembles a key scene in which star Ryan Gosling arrives by “quasi-sentient flying car” to an abandoned Las Vegas.
“I love Blade Runner, but I don’t know if we want that future,” Musk was quoted as saying at the launch event. “I think we want that duster he’s wearing, but not the bleak apocalypse.”
Alcon therefore filed a copyright infringement lawsuit this week in a Southern California federal court, which alleges that defendants had asked permission to use images from the movie “mere hours” before the event but Alcon “refused all permissions and adamantly objected.”
Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.
Extreme political views
And it seems that Alcon is not just suing Elon Musk and Tesla, but is also suing Warner Bros, the film’s distributor that had hosted Musk’s robotaxi event.
Warner Bros. Discovery didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment, AP noted.
Alcon is reportedly working on a spinoff “Blade Runner 2099” series for Amazon.
The film producer reportedly said it is in talks with automakers about brand collaborations but has avoided affiliating with Tesla because of Musk’s “extreme political and social views” and his “massively amplified, highly politicised, capricious and arbitrary behaviour, which sometimes veers into hate speech.”
