Cameo sues OpenAI for trademark infringement

OpenAI, which faced a fierce blowback in Hollywood last month as images of celebrities and dead newsmakers were manipulated without consent, is now drawing more scrutiny over its practices.

This week, Chicago-based tech business Cameo sued OpenAI for trademark infringement.

Cameo, which was founded in 2017, is known for providing services where fans can hire celebrities to make personalized videos wishing their friends a happy birthday or other greetings. The company said its posts have generated more than 100 million views in the past year and customers have made more than 10 million moments.

But last month, when OpenAI announced an update to its text-to-video tool Sora, it launched a new feature called Cameos.

Through that feature, people on the Sora app can scan their faces and then allow other people to use their faces in AI-generated environments. Some celebrities such as YouTube influencer and boxer Jake Paul, who is an investor in OpenAI, participated in the rollout. In less than five days, the Sora app hit more than 1 million downloads.

That has created confusion in the marketplace, Cameo said in a lawsuit filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in San Francisco.

“Not only is OpenAI using Plaintiff’s valuable CAMEO® trademark, it is doing so in a manner that directly competes with Plaintiff and threatens its very existence,” Cameo said in its complaint. “Using Plaintiff’s own trademark, Defendant is luring users away from Plaintiff’s authentic, custom celebrity CAMEO®-branded service to Defendant’s AI-driven ‘Cameo’ service for creating fake yet highly realistic videos featuring celebrity likenesses.”

OpenAI said in a statement, “We’re reviewing the complaint, but we disagree that anyone can claim exclusive ownership over the word ‘cameo.’”

Cameo’s co-Chief Executive Steve Galanis said in a statement that his company tried to resolve the matter with OpenAI, but “they refused to stop using the Cameo name of their new Sora feature.”

In its lawsuit, Cameo said it has several U.S. trademark registrations including for the word Cameo as a downloadable software to create video messages for entertainment, instructional, inspiration or greeting purposes featuring celebrities.

“To protect fans, talent, and the integrity of our marketplace, we felt that we unfortunately had no other option but to bring this lawsuit,” Galanis said.