Disney sent a cease-and-desist. Netflix followed. Hollywood is swinging back, but is it already too late? AI video is not gonna cease, no pun intended, and the companies racing to build it aren't waiting for permission. Elsewhere, Mark Zuckerberg sat before a jury this week in a trial that could reshape the entire social media industry, and somewhere between the courtrooms and the code, nations are quietly preparing for wars fought not by soldiers, but by robots powered by AI. The world is shifting fast. Let's make sense of it together. Stay curious.
The End of Hollywood as We Know It
In February 2026, ByteDance launched Seedance 2.0, an AI video tool that generates hyper-realistic footage from a single photo and a text prompt. Within hours, the internet was flooded with convincing fake films featuring real stars and copyrighted characters. Disney, Netflix, Warner Bros., and Paramount fired cease-and-desist letters almost immediately, calling it an unprecedented smash-and-grab of their IP. ByteDance offered vague assurances. Netflix gave them three days. None of it matters. Even if Seedance disappears tomorrow, the technology cannot be uninvented. Open-source equivalents are already proliferating in jurisdictions that don’t share American copyright protections. And tellingly, Disney — while threatening ByteDance in court — quietly signed a billion-dollar licensing deal with OpenAI to use its characters in Sora. The studios aren’t fighting AI video. They’re fighting for a seat at the table before someone takes it from them. The more serious threat isn’t to Hollywood’s bottom line, it’s to reality itself. When photorealistic footage of anyone doing anything can be created in minutes and spread in hours, our ability to trust what we see collapses entirely. News. Court evidence. Political events. All of it becomes suspect. And when AI can generate an infinite, perfectly personalized video feed tailored to your exact tastes, the addictive pull will make TikTok look like a library card. The studios will adapt, legislate, and litigate. But they are defending a world that is already receding. The question now isn’t whether AI reshapes visual culture, it’s whether we’ll have any shared sense of reality left when it does. 📰 AI News and Trends
Other Tech News
Zuckerberg on Trial, and So Is the Entire Social Media Industry
Mark Zuckerberg took the stand this week in a Los Angeles courtroom in what may be the most consequential legal moment of his career. At the center of K.G.M. v. Meta Platforms is a 20-year-old California woman who alleges Meta deliberately engineered its platforms to addict young users, contributing to her depression and suicidal ideation. The evidence emerging from the trial has been damning: a 2015 email chain showed Zuckerberg himself pushing to increase users’ time-in-app by 12%, directly contradicting his earlier Congressional testimony, while internal Meta documents revealed that roughly 30% of American children aged 10–12 had Instagram accounts as far back as 2015, and that Meta’s own research found parental supervision does little to curb teens’ compulsive use. The interesting part is that Zuckerberg and many tech executives do not want their own kids near social media, but definitely profit from other minors using the technology. Zuckerberg largely deflected, claiming documents were taken out of context and pointing to Apple as a more capable enforcer of age verification, a posture of strategic deniability that may define the case’s outcome. The stakes extend well beyond Meta: a verdict for the plaintiff could shatter Big Tech’s longstanding Section 230 liability shield, exposing the industry to billions in damages and forcing fundamental platform redesigns. This courtroom drama is unfolding against a sweeping global backdrop where countries like Australia already banned social media for children under 16 in December 2025, and Denmark, France, Spain, Malaysia, Slovenia, Greece, Germany, and the UK are all moving toward similar restrictions, each wrestling with the same core tension between child protection and civil liberties concerns around invasive age verification. What’s quietly on trial here isn’t just one company’s conduct, but the foundational assumption that platforms bear no responsibility for the psychological architecture they deliberately build, and governments worldwide are no longer willing to wait for the verdict. 📚Learning CornerHarvard Science in the News — “Dopamine, Smartphones & You: A Battle for Your Time” How will the next War be fought? We'll leave you with a sobering thought. While the world debates social media addiction and AI-generated video, a quieter and far more consequential arms race is underway. In our Other Tech News section, we look at how nations are rapidly militarizing artificial intelligence — and how China, in particular, is moving toward a war-fighting model built entirely around robotics: ground units, aerial swarms, humanoid machines, all coordinated by AI with no human on the front line. The software, the hardware, and the very concept of war are all changing simultaneously. If the past week taught us anything, it's that technology moves faster than our ability to govern it. On every front. 🧰 AI Tools of The DayVideo Generators
🚀 Showcase Your Innovation in the Premier Tech and AI Newsletter (link) As a vanguard in the realm of technology and artificial intelligence, we pride ourselves in delivering cutting-edge insights, AI tools, and in-depth coverage of emerging technologies to over 55,000+ tech CEOs, managers, programmers, entrepreneurs, and enthusiasts. Our readers represent the brightest minds from industry giants such as Tesla, OpenAI, Samsung, IBM, NVIDIA, and countless others. Explore sponsorship possibilities and elevate your brand's presence in the world of tech and AI. Learn more about partnering with us. You’re a free subscriber to Yaro’s Newsletter. For the full experience, become a paying subscriber. Disclaimer: We do not give financial advice. Everything we share is the result of our research and our opinions. Please do your own research and make conscious decisions.
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Thursday, February 19, 2026
🎬 The End of Hollywood as We Know It
Monday, February 16, 2026
⚠️Are US AI models being distilled by Chinese Competitors?
⚠️Are US AI models being distilled by Chinese Competitors?Plus: ChatGPT Users by Country: India leads the Chart.
ChatGPT is growing faster overseas, led by students’ usage. Also, Chinese models are becoming a concern over their advanced video outputs, allowing anyone to create movie-like scenes, but face scrutiny over using “distillation,” a technique that replicates advanced model capabilities more efficiently. We explain what distillation is, why it matters, and share key tools and resources to learn it.
📰 AI News and Trends
Other Tech News
SeeDance2.0 generates very realistic videos, and Disney is nervous.
ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, has launched Seedance 2.0, an AI video generator that turns simple text prompts into cinematic videos with storylines, characters, voiceovers, and sound, positioning it as a direct rival to OpenAI’s Sora and Google’s Veo. The model, integrated into CapCut (with ~642 million monthly active users), can create realistic 15-second clips and is driving rapid adoption alongside ByteDance’s broader AI ecosystem, including its Doubao chatbot with nearly 250 million monthly users. However, the tool has sparked major backlash from Hollywood, with Disney issuing cease-and-desist letters and the Motion Picture Association accusing ByteDance of using copyrighted content “on a massive scale.” Privacy concerns also emerged after filmmakers reported AI-generated voices mimicking real people without consent. To scale its AI ambitions, ByteDance is investing heavily in infrastructure, including plans to deploy over 7,000 Nvidia Blackwell chips in overseas data centers, signaling its intent to compete globally and potentially reshape video production, advertising, and entertainment. 📚Learning CornerDeepSpeed Distillation Documentation
Best for enterprise and large-model distillation Are US AI models being distilled by Chinese Competitors?
OpenAI has warned US lawmakers that Chinese AI company DeepSeek used “distillation” techniques to extract outputs from OpenAI’s models and train its competing R1 chatbot, calling it an attempt to “free-ride” on billions of dollars of US AI investment. Distillation allows a smaller or cheaper model to replicate the capabilities of advanced systems by learning from their responses, giving DeepSeek a major cost advantage. Its V3 model reportedly required just 2.8 million GPU hours using older Nvidia H800 chips. OpenAI also detected obfuscated access methods, including third-party routing and unauthorized resellers, designed to bypass safeguards. Lawmakers and national security officials view this as both a business threat, undermining paid AI services from OpenAI and Anthropic, and a strategic risk, as copied models may lack safety protections and could be used in sensitive areas like biology or cyberwarfare. The situation highlights a growing AI arms race between the US and China, where technical replication, infrastructure access, and chip supply chains, not just original invention, are becoming decisive competitive factors. 🧰 AI Tools of The DayDistillation Tools
ChatGPT Users by Country: India leads the Chart.
India has become one of OpenAI’s most critical growth markets, with CEO Sam Altman revealing that ChatGPT now has 100 million weekly active users in the country, making it the platform’s second-largest user base after the United States and accounting for over 11% of its nearly 900 million global weekly users. Adoption has been driven largely by students, India has the highest number of student users globally, and is supported by OpenAI’s localization efforts, including opening a New Delhi office in 2025 and offering low-cost or free access tiers tailored to India’s price-sensitive market. With more than 1 billion internet users, India represents a massive expansion opportunity, and OpenAI is planning new partnerships with the government to accelerate adoption and infrastructure development. The rapid growth highlights India’s emerging influence in shaping global AI deployment, as major competitors like Google also aggressively target the region, positioning India as a central battleground for the next phase of AI expansion. 🚀 Showcase Your Innovation in the Premier Tech and AI Newsletter (link) As a vanguard in the realm of technology and artificial intelligence, we pride ourselves in delivering cutting-edge insights, AI tools, and in-depth coverage of emerging technologies to over 55,000+ tech CEOs, managers, programmers, entrepreneurs, and enthusiasts. Our readers represent the brightest minds from industry giants such as Tesla, OpenAI, Samsung, IBM, NVIDIA, and countless others. Explore sponsorship possibilities and elevate your brand's presence in the world of tech and AI. Learn more about partnering with us. You’re a free subscriber to Yaro’s Newsletter. For the full experience, become a paying subscriber. Disclaimer: We do not give financial advice. Everything we share is the result of our research and our opinions. Please do your own research and make conscious decisions.
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