Attorneys for Elon Musk intend to move to dismiss a case that accuses the Tesla CEO, who is also the head of President Donald Trump’s DOGE organization, of using AI-generated, copyright-violating “Blade Runner”-inspired images at a Tesla press event.
In a filing submitted to the U.S. District Court Central District of California, Western Division late Tuesday, attorneys for Musk said both Musk and Tesla, which is also named as a defendant in the suit, will move to dismiss “all claims” for relief with prejudice. “With prejudice” is a legal term meaning that a case is dismissed permanently, and can’t be refiled.
The plaintiff in the suit, Alcon Entertainment, intends to oppose the motion, per the filing.
In October, Alcon, the production company behind the 2017 film “Blade Runner 2049,” filed the lawsuit against Musk, Tesla, and Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) for what it claimed was a willful circumvention of its IP rights.
According to Alcon’s complaint, Musk and WBD asked to use imagery from “Blade Runner 2049” to promote Tesla’s futuristic concept cars hours before their unveiling on a Warner studio lot. When Alcon wouldn’t agree to provide the rights through WBD, the suit alleges that Tesla, at Musk’s direction, sourced that imagery as raw material to duplicate it using an AI model. No specific AI model is named in the suit (yet).
Musk then showed this allegedly fake “Blade Runner” imagery during the event while talking about the film itself.
Alcon also claims in its complaint that it was never made privy to any of the agreements between Tesla and WBD that would’ve been necessary before Tesla’s presser. The production company’s suit proposes banning Tesla from further distributing the disputed promotional materials, as well as unspecified damages — although the complaint also notes that infringements under the U.S. Copyright Act can be up to $150,000 per violation, and it provides a further cost estimation that is higher:
“Based on past actual brand affiliation contracts for automotive partners on BR2049 [BladeRunner 2049], Tesla likely would have had to make significant expenditures — at least in the mid-six-figures (at least $500,000) and possibly into the eight figures ($10 million or more) to obtain a BR2049 brand affiliation with Tesla and the [company’s] cybercab [robotaxi] at market value, if Alcon had even been willing to do it at all,” reads the original complaint filed by Alcon’s legal team. “The copyright infringements here facilitated allowing Tesla to save this expenditure.”
