ByteDance just dropped Seedance 2.0, and the internet can't decide if it's a breakthrough or more of the same AI-generated mess. Irish filmmaker Ruairi Robinson's demo clips - featuring eerily convincing digital Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt deepfakes battling zombies and robots - sparked immediate buzz across creative communities. The footage looks significantly better than previous generation tools, but as The Verge's critical assessment suggests, we're still far from AI replacing traditional filmmaking.
ByteDance, the Chinese tech giant behind TikTok, is making another play for AI video dominance with Seedance 2.0. The timing couldn't be more pointed - as Hollywood grapples with strikes and studios experiment cautiously with AI tools, ByteDance is pushing a model that genuinely looks better than what most competitors have shipped.
Irish filmmaker Ruairi Robinson became Seedance 2.0's breakout tester when he started posting clips to social media. The results turned heads immediately. His AI-generated Tom Cruise moves through apocalyptic cityscapes with unsettling realism, throwing punches at a Brad Pitt lookalike that actually connect with weight and timing. Previous AI video tools struggled with basic continuity - hands would morph, faces would melt between frames. Seedance 2.0 seems to handle these challenges better, producing footage that holds together for several seconds at a stretch.
But The Verge isn't buying the hype. Charles Pulliam-Moore's review pulls no punches, calling the output "still slop" despite the technical improvements. It's a blunt assessment that cuts through the AI booster rhetoric flooding social feeds. The fundamental problem remains: these tools can create impressive individual moments, but they can't yet craft coherent narratives or match the intentionality of human-directed work.
The quality gap matters more than enthusiasts want to admit. Yes, the digital Tom Cruise looks remarkably like the real actor. The camerawork mimics action movie conventions with surprising competence. Characters move with what Robinson describes as "complex fluidity." Yet something essential is missing - the purposeful choreography, the emotional stakes, the storytelling craft that separates compelling cinema from pretty animations.
