Source: ODD ANDERSEN / Getty / Elon Musk
Elon Musk is currently out here stumping for Trump and giving money to those who sign up for his Super PAC. Due to a new lawsuit, he may have to dig even deeper into his pockets.
Spotted on The Verge, one of the production companies behind the 2017 film Blade Runner 2049, feels Elon Musk, who is honestly just the Donald Trump of tech, ripped off the movie for his robotaxi event.
On Monday, October 21, LA-based production company Alcon Entertainment slapped Phony Stark, his company Tesla, and Warner Bros. Discovery, alleging the use of an AI image generator to create promotional art for the We, Robot event that resembles stills from Blade Runner 2049.
According to Alcon, who also owns the copyright to Blade Runner 2049, WBD and Tesla decided to slide them a request to use imagery from the film just hours ahead of the We, Robot event on October 10 that conveniently took place on the Warner Bros. lot in California.
The website notes that because this event was live-streamed internationally, Alcon directly had to provide clearance for the images, even though Warner Bros. owns some licensing rights to Blade Runner 2049.
Per The Verge:
“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,” Alcon’s suit explains. “Alcon did not want BR2049 to be affiliated with Musk, Tesla, or any Musk company, for all of these reasons.”
Despite Alcon’s refusal, however, Tesla allegedly decided to feed shots from Blade Runner 2049 into an AI image generator to create “a lightly stylized fake screen still screen” which was displayed prominently during the We, Robot presentation.
The Verge also reports that Musk mentioned Blade Runner while describing sci-fi interpretations of the future. The live stream cut to a photo of a man wearing a trench coat standing in front of a dusty apocalyptic cityscape, basically the entire look of Blade Runner 2049.
This is not the first time Elon Musk and his company have been accused of copying someone else’s style. During the same event, the director of I Robot, Alex Proyas, accused Musk of swagger-jacking his designs, a claim many people on X, formerly Twitter, quickly made.
So, these latest accusations don’t shock us at all.
