Output quality is not the risk. Provenance is. Six of the Motion Picture Association's seven member studios sent ByteDance cease-and-desist letters in February 2026 over Seedance, and ByteDance signed a copyright agreement with the MPA on 17 August 2026. Before you ship, check three things: the model's rights position, what your platform licence actually permits, and who holds the rights to every face on screen.
Every comparison in this category ranks motion quality, prompt adherence and price. None of them ranks the thing that actually stops a delivery.
Why does model choice become a rights question?
- Provenance
- What went into the model, and what it will let you generate. Two separate exposures that get discussed as one.
- Indemnity
- A contractual promise to cover your losses if a claim lands. A platform's agreement with a trade body is not an indemnity to you.
What went into the model is its training data. That's the platform's problem until it becomes yours.
What you generate with it is yours immediately.
Almost every comparison you'll read addresses neither. They rank motion quality, prompt adherence and price. Useful for choosing a shot. Useless for a delivery where someone signs off on clearance.
What actually happened with Seedance?
Dated, without editorialising. Worth noting that Hexcoded reaches the Seedance and Seedream models through BytePlus, ByteDance's international arm.
12 February 2026 — launch
Seedance 2.0 launches. Clips of recognisable actors spread widely. The MPA issues a statement calling on ByteDance to cease.
13 February — Disney
Disney sends a cease-and-desist alleging the platform offers a pirated library of its characters.
14 February — performers respond
The Human Artistry Campaign, whose members include SAG-AFTRA and the DGA, condemns the model.
16 February — six of seven studios
ByteDance says it's strengthening safeguards, having already paused user uploads of images of real people. Paramount Skydance sends its own letter. Six of the MPA's seven member studios follow.
17 August 2026 — agreement signed
ByteDance and the MPA sign an agreement strengthening copyright safeguards across the Seedance video and Seedream image models. ByteDance says newer model versions carry stronger IP protections.
What can each model actually do?
Verified in Hexcoded's own picker rather than from vendor announcements — which matters, because the two disagree more often than you'd expect.
| Model | Duration | Resolution | Rights position | Notable |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Seedance 2.5 | 4–30s in a single pass | 480 / 720 / 1080 | Covered by the August 2026 MPA agreement | Up to 50 references: 30 images, 30 actors, 10 videos, 10 audio |
| Kling 3.0 Omni | 3–15s | 720 / 1080 | No comparable public dispute | Richest reference control — frames, video, elements |
| Veo 3.1 | 8s locked per pass; roughly 7s per Extend run, up to about 20 runs | 720 / 1080 / 4K | Google-operated | The only 4K tier of the four |
| Wan 2.7 | 2–15s | 720 / 1080 | Alibaba-hosted | Reference ceiling of 8, against Seedance 2.5's 50 |
Source: Hexcoded Creative Studio picker, checked September 2026, with Veo figures corroborated by Google's own developer documentation. Verified against the product rather than vendor announcements.
Where this falls short. Two things this table isn't. It doesn't tell you whether your specific output infringes — it tells you which platforms have had a rights problem and how they resolved it. And it covers four of a thirty-plus roster. Duration, resolution, aspect ratio and reference ceiling all vary per model, and the picker is what shows you each one.
What about Sora?
The API shuts down on 24 September 2026, covering sora-2, sora-2-pro and the Videos API, with no recommended replacement from OpenAI. The web and app experiences closed on 26 April 2026.
What does your platform licence actually permit?
This is the check that gets skipped, and it isn't about the model at all.
- Do you own the output, or hold a licence to it? On Hexcoded you own it — the terms say so explicitly
- Where can it run? Hexcoded's scope is digital only: paid ads and organic posts on online platforms, plus your own websites and apps
- What about offline? Television, print and outdoor need a separate written agreement
- Can you edit it? Where an actor appears, light edits only — trimming, cropping, captions, music, end-cards
- Is every face on screen licensed? This is the one that gets skipped and the one that generates claims
The third and fourth lines are worth reading twice. "Full commercial rights" reads as unlimited, and the accurate version is unlimited within digital. And where a human creator appears, you may not re-generate, morph or re-voice a face outside the platform — so an external post pipeline that touches performance is a constraint rather than an inconvenience.
It isn't only a contract term either. Using a licensed likeness outside the licensed scope is listed as a prohibited use, which makes it an enforcement matter rather than a footnote.
There's no watermark, and no automatic AI label. Hexcoded states plainly that it adds neither, and that any labelling required where you publish is your obligation as publisher. Its acceptable use policy is blunter still: the platform provides the tool, not clearance of your campaigns.
Where this falls short. Clearing every line above reduces your exposure. It doesn't eliminate it. Nobody can promise that, and a platform that does is telling you something untrue.
How do you keep this current?
Verify against the product's own picker, not against the vendor's announcement.
Announced specs and shipped specs diverge more than you'd expect, and we know because we got it wrong. An earlier version of the table above was built from vendor documentation and had two of four rows backwards — it said Kling did native 4K and Veo capped at 1080p. The picker shows the reverse, and Google's own documentation confirms Veo's three resolution tiers.
The same table said Seedance 2.5 accepted "up to 50 reference files," which is a total rather than an image count and omits actors entirely.
Check the model's own settings before a commercial delivery, not a comparison post — including this one.
Model specifications, rights positions and licence terms described here are current as of the publication date and change frequently. Hexcoded's terms and actor licence are governed by the laws of India, with jurisdiction in Gurugram, Haryana. Nothing here is legal advice.
- Check the model's rights position before the shoot, not after the edit
- Never generate a recognisable real person you don't have a licence for. This is the exposure you control
- "Full commercial rights" is unlimited within digital. Television, print and outdoor need a separate agreement
- Where an actor appears, light edits only — and breaching that is a prohibited use, not a footnote
- There's no watermark and no automatic AI label. The labelling obligation is yours as publisher
- Stop building on Sora now. The API dies 24 September 2026 and platform-stored files are deleted after it
- Treat a platform's copyright agreement as its protection, not yours
- Verify specs against the picker. We built this table from vendor docs once and got two rows backwards
ByteDance and the Motion Picture Association signed an agreement on 17 August 2026 strengthening copyright safeguards on the Seedance and Seedream models. That covers ByteDance's obligations, not yours. You remain responsible for what you generate.
After Seedance 2.0 launched in February 2026, clips of recognisable actors and studio characters spread widely. Disney alleged the platform made its copyrighted characters available without authorisation, Paramount Skydance alleged infringement of its franchises, and six of the MPA's seven member studios sent letters.
Yes. The risk is specific rather than general. It sits in generating recognisable real people or protected characters you have no licence for. Original characters, licensed creators and your own likeness don't carry that exposure.
On Hexcoded it means digital: paid ads and organic posts on online platforms, plus your own websites and apps. Television, print, outdoor and other offline use require a separate written agreement. Read the scope rather than the headline.
Of the four in the table, only Veo 3.1 — and it's locked to eight seconds per generation, extending through chained runs of roughly seven seconds each. It's also plan-tiered, so the model supporting 4K and your plan permitting it are separate questions.
The API shuts down that day, and data associated with Sora accounts is deleted after the cutoff. Files you already exported are unaffected. Export anything stored only on the platform now.
One roster, rights on the page
Creative Studio runs 30+ frontier models on one credit balance. You own the outputs, there's no watermark, and the scope is published rather than implied — digital surfaces, with offline by separate agreement.
Open Creative StudioMore on model capability, access and rights in Models.