# @-mention your input references

Period: Jan – Mar 2026 · Era: 2026 · The Shakeout

Kling 3.0, Seedance 2.0, the Hollywood letters and the end of Sora.

Seedance 2.0 let you name your assets inside the prompt, like tagging people in a post: use this image as the first frame, copy the camera move from this clip, put this track underneath. It was powerful enough that Hollywood studios sent legal letters within days, and the same season OpenAI shut Sora down.

## How it worked

1. Seedance 2.0: up to nine images, three videos and three audio clips per job. `@Image1 as opening frame, @Video1 reference the camera language, @Audio1 as BGM.` Fifteen-second multi-shot with separate music, ambience and voice tracks.
2. Kling 3.0 / 3.0 Omni: three to fifteen seconds, native audio in five languages, auto or custom multi-shot storyboards, elements from images or video, voice references extracted from a character clip.
3. Grok Imagine 1.0 for fast lip-synced dialogue; Vidu Q3 for sixteen-second native-audio clips; LTX-2.3 for open weights.
4. The response: Disney's cease-and-desist on 13 February, Paramount's on the 15th, the MPA's first AI letter on the 20th; a ByteDance–MPA pact followed in August.
5. Sora's shutdown was announced on 24 March; the app closed on 26 April.

## Why it mattered

Seedance 2.0 made @-mentioning assets the lingua franca and triggered the first studio-versus-model legal cycle; Sora proved a social feed is not a filmmaking workflow.

## Tools of the era

- Seedance 2.0 (2026): https://seed.bytedance.com/en/seedance
- Kling 3.0 / 3.0 Omni (2026): https://klingai.com
- Grok Imagine (2025): https://x.ai
- LTX-2 (2026): https://ltx.io
- invideo (2025): https://invideo.io
- Claude (2025): https://claude.ai

## Example videos and posts

- Grok Imagine 1.0 · xAI: https://x.com/xai/status/2018164753810764061
- Kling 3.0 first look · Theoretically Media: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOlFslVqujg
- The AI film workflow no one is talking about: Dragon Blue for $187 · Theoretically Media: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORuSQ0Fui-A
- The most powerful Seedance 2 feature · Curious Refuge: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBB5SOfcg4c
- Eight ways to use first frame and last frame · Curious Refuge: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FeWDcpwTCNA
- An animated short with Nano Banana 2, Kling 3.0 and Motion Control · Uncanny Harry: https://x.com/Uncanny_Harry/status/2038665115109560465

## On the timeline

- [Kling 3.0](https://aifilmhistory.org/entry/kling-3-0) (2026-02)
- [Seedance 2.0](https://aifilmhistory.org/entry/seedance-2-0) (2026-02-09)
- [Grok Imagine 1.0](https://aifilmhistory.org/entry/grok-imagine-1-0) (2026-02-02)
- [Sora Shutdown Announced](https://aifilmhistory.org/entry/sora-shutdown) (2026-03-24)
- [Sora App and Web Officially Shut Down](https://aifilmhistory.org/entry/sora-discontinued) (2026-04-26)
- [Dragon Blue](https://aifilmhistory.org/entry/dragon-blue) (2026-03)
- [The Patchwright](https://aifilmhistory.org/entry/the-patchwright) (2026-04-12)
- [Junkyard King | Chapter 0 | The Pink Edge](https://aifilmhistory.org/entry/junkyard-king) (2026-03)

## Sources

- Kling 3.0 user guide: https://kling.ai/quickstart/klingai-video-3-model-user-guide
- Seedance 2.0 launch: https://seed.bytedance.com/en/blog/official-launch-of-seedance-2-0
- Cruise vs Pitt and the Hollywood reaction: https://deadline.com/2026/02/cruise-vs-pitt-seedance-viral-ai-hollywood-videos-1236717127/
- Studios send cease-and-desist letters: https://variety.com/2026/film/news/paramount-disney-bytedance-cease-and-desist-seedance-ai-infringement-ip-1236663663/
- Sora shuts down: https://techcrunch.com/2026/03/24/openais-sora-was-the-creepiest-app-on-your-phone-now-its-shutting-down/
- Theoretically Media: the ultimate AI film pipeline: https://theoreticallymedia.beehiiv.com/p/the-ultimate-ai-film-pipeline

---
Source: https://aifilmhistory.org/workflows/at-mention-your-assets