LeBron James' Lawyers Send Cease-and-Desist to AI Company Making Pregnant Videos of Him

Source: 404 Media

The creators of an AI tool and Discord community that allowed people to create AI videos of NBA stars says that it got a cease-and-desist letter from lawyers representing LeBron James. This marks one of the first known times that a high-profile celebrity has threatened legal action against an AI company for enabling the creation of nonconsensual AI imagery of their likeness. It is also one of the first times we’ve seen a celebrity take legal action against a type of nonconsensual but not strictly sexual type of AI-generated content, which is rampant on Instagram and other social media.

In March, I wrote about ‘Brainrot’ AI that was regularly going viral on Instagram. A lot of the most popular brainrot AI videos featured LeBron James and were created using a tool called Interlink AI, which runs on a larger AI generation platform called FlickUp. On the Interlink AI Discord channel, people were learning how to make the videos with detailed guides that in some cases explained exactly how to make videos of James. High profile creators there were racking up millions of views on Instagram making AI generated videos of James and Steph Curry. These included videos where an AI-generated James stood by as an AI-generated Diddy sexually assaulted Steph Curry in prison, videos of James imagined as a homeless person, videos of James on his knees with his tongue out, and videos of James pregnant.

-snip-

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.”

Stacks would not share the cease-and-desist letter with 404 Media, but said that it came from the law firm Grubman Shire Meiselas & Sacks, P.C. Grubman Shire did not respond to numerous phone calls seeking more information, and a receptionist that we reached said that they could not connect us with the lawyers there. 404 Media left a message with the receptionist asking for comment but did not hear back.

-snip-

Read more: https://www.404media.co/lebron-james-lawyers-send-cease-and-desist-to-ai-company-making-pregnant-videos-of-him/

---

It would be useful to know exactly what wording the law firm used to shut those AI-fan idiots down.

Generative AI is especially appealing to people with way too much time on their hands, zero talent, and little or no intelligence, who can use these AI tools (always unethical to use because they were trained on stolen intellectual property) to get views and possibly make some money on the internet. It's bad enough when they're used for a good cause (the people foolishly using AI to ridicule Trump are just adding to the AI slop and showing contempt for the creatives whose work was stolen to train the AI). But the sort of use this article describes has no possible justification. Generative AI has encouraged some of the worst behavior online.

And our idiot president, flattered and bribed by ethics-free and conscience-free AI bros, is only encouraging its use.

Btw, that was a very tame headline considering the story's content. But I suppose an alternative headline like "LeBron James' Lawyers Send Cease-and-Desist to AI Company Making Videos of Him Watching Steph Curry Being Raped by Diddy" would've been too long.