ByteDance’s AI Ambitions Are Being Hampered by Compute Restraints and Copyright Concerns

Zeyi Yang Business Mar 5, 2026 4:14 PM ByteDance’s AI Ambitions Are Being Hampered by Compute Restraints and Copyright Concerns ByteDance’s new Seedance 2.0 AI video model seemed unstoppable—until heavy demand strained the company’s compute capacity and copyright complaints began piling up. Photo-Illustration: WIRED Staff; Getty Images Save this story Save this story Move over Sora 2 , there’s a hot new AI video model in town. In early February, ByteDance unveiled Seedance 2.0, a major upgrade to its flagship video model, which had previously remained fairly obscure. Its powerful capabilities immediately shocked the AI ecosystem in China, even among audiences who had once been skeptical of AI-generated video and viewed the technology mainly as a way to produce slop. Feng Ji, the founder of Game Science, the studio that developed China’s global hit video game Black Myth: Wukong , wrote online that he was “deeply shocked” by the model’s abilities and believed Seedance 2.0 would pose significant challenges to China’s current copyright regulations and content moderation systems. Pan Tianhong, who leads a Chinese professional video production studio with over 15 million followers on social media, posted a video in which he said Seedance 2.0 is significantly better than any video-making models that came before it. “It thinks like a director,” Pan said. However, most people can’t get their hands on the model at this moment because access remains fairly restricted. As of this week, ByteDance is only allowing existing users of its consumer-facing AI apps in China—the most popular one is the chatbot app Doubao , but the company also has a confusing constellation of lesser-known apps like Jimeng, Xiaoyunque, and Spark—to experience Seedance 2.0. All these apps are for the Chinese domestic market only, preventing people outside the country from testing the model themselves. (The restrictions have prompted some savvy people in China to resell their ByteDance accounts to eager ea...