‘Blade Runner 2049’ Producers Sue Elon Musk, Tesla and Warner Bros. Discovery, Alleging Copyright Infringement

Alcon Entertainment, the production company behind “Blade Runner 2049,” sued Tesla and CEO Elon Musk, as well as Warner Bros. Discovery, alleging that AI-generated images depicting scenes from the film used for the launch of Tesla’s self-driving Robotaxi represent copyright infringement.

In its lawsuit, filed Monday in L.A., Alcon said it had adamantly insisted that “Blade Runner 2049,” which stars Ryan Gosling and Harrison Ford, have no affiliation of any kind with “Tesla, X, Musk or any Musk-owned company,” given “Musk’s massively amplified, highly politicized, capricious and arbitrary behavior, which sometimes veers into hate speech.”

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Alcon’s lawsuit accuses Musk, Tesla and WBD of direct copyright infringement, vicarious copyright infringement and contributory copyright infringement, and false endorsement. The suit seeks an injunction blocking Musk, Tesla, WBD and “anyone working in concert with them from further copying, displaying, distributing, selling or offering to sell ‘BR2049’ or protectible elements thereof in connection with Tesla or Musk, or making derivative works thereof for such purposes.” The suit also seeks unspecified monetary damages.

“The financial magnitude of the misappropriation here was substantial,” the lawsuit says. “Alcon has spent decades and hundreds of millions of dollars building the ‘BR2049’ brand into the famous mark that it now is. Prior actual ‘BR2049’ contracts linking automotive brands to the Picture have had dollar price tags in the eight figures.”

Reps for Tesla, Musk and Warner Bros. Discovery did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

On Oct. 10, 2024, Musk launched Tesla’s fully autonomous Robotaxi on the Warner Bros. Discovery lot in Burbank, Calif. According to Alcon, the tech mogul, in his presentation, used AI-created images representing scenes from Alcon’s copyrighted motion picture “subsequent to Alcon denying any use of said images.” The Tesla presentation was livestreamed globally and subsequently posted or re-posted “over thousands of times with millions of total views,” according to the company.

During the Oct. 10 presentation, AI-created images mirroring scenes from “Blade Runner 2049” — including one featuring “a Ryan Gosling look-alike” and another one of “the iconic Peugeot-styled futuristic vehicle in the film” — were used during an 11-second segment of the presentation “during which Musk attempted to explain why these images were being showcased,” according to the Alcon complaint.

On Oct. 9, the day before the launch, Warner Bros. Discovery contacted Alcon to request the ability to use specific images and clips from “Blade Runner 2049” for Tesla’s presentation. Alcon Co-CEO Andrew Kosove and Broderick Johnson “refused WBD’s request, objecting to their film being affiliated in any way with Tesla, Musk or any Musk-owned company,” according to the company. The lawsuit alleges that neither Warner Bros. Pictures nor any other WBD entity “has or ever had sufficient rights to allow Tesla to exploit ‘BR2049’ or any of its elements, marks or goodwill in connection with the globally livestreamed cybercab reveal event.”

Alcon’s lawsuit alleges Tesla and Musk asked WBD for specific permission and rights to use the below image, which the production company said is “one of the most iconic images” from the 2017 film. The image depicts the film’s protagonist, K, the replicant police officer played by Gosling, “with his close-cropped hair, garbed in his distinctive trench coat or ‘duster,’ as he stands next to his spinner, facing away from the camera to survey the devastated orange-light-bathed Las Vegas cityscape”:

The Alcon lawsuit alleges that “Musk personally became aware of Alcon’s permission denials and express objections” to using “Blade Runner 2049” images for the Tesla event. “He thus personally knew and understood that to incorporate ‘BR2049’ into the event presentation at all would be improper and an unauthorized misappropriation of ‘BR2049’ goodwill,” the suit says. “He did it anyway.”

According to Alcon, the below image from Musk’s presentation “was clearly intended to read visually either as an actual still image from ‘BR2049’s iconic sequence of K exploring the ruined Las Vegas, or as a minimally stylized copy of one”:

Based on Alcon’s examination, the image Musk used in the Tesla Robotaxi event appears to have been generated by AI based on official stills from “Blade Runner 2049” or “some closely equivalent input direction.”

According to Alcon’s lawsuit, “It was hardly coincidental that the only specific Hollywood film which Musk actually discussed to pitch his new, fully autonomous, AI-driven cybercab was ‘BR2049’ — a film which just happens to feature a strikingly designed, artificially intelligent, fully autonomous car throughout the story. Especially where Defendants had asked Alcon’s permission to use ‘BR2049’ and been so firmly refused, this was clearly all a bad faith and intentionally malicious gambit by Defendants to make the otherwise stilted and stiff content of the joint WBD-Tesla event more attractive to the global audience and to misappropriate ‘BR2049’s brand to help sell Teslas.”

According to Alcon’s suit, Musk and Tesla’s use of the allegedly infringing images “is likely to cause confusion among Alcon’s ‘Blade Runner’ brand partner customers, including those it is partnering with for its upcoming ‘Blade Runner 2099’ series for Amazon Prime, currently filming in Europe.” Per the lawsuit, Alcon is “in talks with other automotive brands” for partnerships on the “Blade Runner 2099” series.

Alcon’s suit said that in addition to “more ordinary commercial issues, there is the problematic Musk himself. Any prudent brand considering any Tesla partnership has to take Musk’s massively amplified, highly politicized, capricious and arbitrary behavior, which sometimes veers into hate speech, into account. If, as here, a company or its principals do not actually agree with Musk’s extreme political and social views, then a potential brand affiliation with Tesla is even more issue fraught.”

Musk’s controversial statements include a post in November 2023 in which he wrote on X, “You have said the actual truth,” replying to a user who evoked the white-nationalist Great Replacement conspiracy theory that Jewish communities “have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them.” Musk’s comment led several large companies to suspend ads on X, and it was widely criticized including by the White House, which condemned it as “abhorrent promotion of antisemitic and racist hate.” Musk later apologized for the post and insisted he’s not antisemitic, saying that what he intended to mean is that persecuted groups funded by Jewish organizations were calling for attacks on Jewish people and that “it’s unwise to support groups that want your annihilation.” 

Alcon filed the lawsuit Monday (Oct. 21) in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, Western division. A copy of the complaint is available at this link.