Alcon Entertainment is suing Elon Musk’s Tesla for copyright infringement, claiming that the car manufacturer used images from the 2017 sci-fi film “Blade Runner 2049” without the production company’s permission.
According to the lawsuit, filed today in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, CA, Alcon alleges that Tesla used these images to generate new visuals for the unveiling of its self-driving Cybercab earlier this month.
A day before the Cybercab event, Telsa and Warner Bros. Discovery—which released the Blade Runner sequel and was hosting the event on its Burbank lot—asked Alcon Entertainment for permission to use images from the film. Alcon refused to cooperate due to concerns about being associated with Musk, whom they described as “problematic,” Tesla, or any of his other companies.
“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,” the attorneys wrote in their complaint.
However, after Alcon refused to allow Blade Runner 2049 images to be used for the October 10 event, AI image generators were used to create similar images for the event, Alcon’s lawyers contend. (Warner Bros. Discovery was also named as a defendant in Alcon’s lawsuit.)
During the livestream event on X, Musk made references to Blade Runner, stating that Tesla envisions an exciting future of transportation, in contrast to the bleak, dystopian visions depicted in science fiction like the Bladerunner series. “I love Blade Runner, but I don’t know if we want that future,” he said. “I think we want that duster he is wearing, but not the bleak apocalypse.”
This did not sit well with Alcon.
“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,” the studio’s attorneys said in its filing today.
A vocal supporter of former U.S. President Donald Trump, Musk has been campaigning hard for the Republican nominee, appearing in public at rallies and deluging users on his social network, X, with his pro-Trump tweets. Last month, Trump even suggested that Musk would have a place in his administration cleaning up bureaucratic inefficiencies.
Alcon is seeking unspecified damages, arguing that the misuse of copyrighted materials has financially damaged their ongoing negotiations and put future Blade Runner projects, including automotive partnerships and a television series, at risk.
“The false affiliation between BR2049 and Tesla is irreparably entangled in the global media tapestry,” Alcon Entertainment said. “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.”
