Court Sets Hearing in Tung Tung Sahur Dispute
In August 2026, Deadline reported that a hearing was set in a lawsuit involving the AI-generated character Tung Tung Tung Sahur and companies disputing related rights. NPR describes the California dispute as a test of whether creators can claim ownership of AI-generated characters used in games and other media, while PCMag identified France-based Mementum Labs as representing the character's Indonesian creator.
A court hearing has been set in a lawsuit involving rights to Tung Tung Tung Sahur, an AI-generated "Italian brainrot" character, Deadline reports. The dispute concerns competing company claims around a character that has appeared in the Roblox ecosystem and has become part of a broader argument over ownership of AI-generated media.
NPR reports that the California legal battle pits a company behind a popular game using Italian brainrot characters against a French startup representing young creators of several characters featured in the game. NPR characterized the dispute as a potential test of whether such characters can be used in games and other media without paying or acknowledging their creators.
An AI-art ownership dispute
Tung Tung Tung Sahur was created using seven prompts in an AI image generator, according to NPR. The character is among a group of surreal AI-generated meme figures widely circulated through social platforms, YouTube, and games.
Earlier reporting by PCMag identified the French company as Mementum Labs, which represented Tung Tung Tung Sahur's Indonesian creator, Noxaasht. PCMag reported that Mementum alleged in September 2025 that the developer of Roblox game Steal a Brainrot had generated millions of dollars in revenue using the character. The game's developer, known as Sammy, posted that the character had been deleted because of copyright, PCMag reported; the publication also reported that the developer and game team did not respond to its requests for comment.
The available reporting does not establish the terms of the current lawsuit, the hearing date, or any court ruling.
Copyright questions remain unresolved
NPR notes that US copyright law has not supplied a universal answer for AI-assisted works. The US Copyright Office has stated that whether human contributions to AI-generated output establish authorship must be evaluated case by case, NPR reported.
For ML practitioners and product teams, disputes of this kind put attention on a practical distinction: generating an asset with a model does not by itself resolve who can license, monetize, or enforce rights over that asset. Comparable cases often turn on evidence of human creative control, contractual rights, trademarks, and the particular ways an asset is used in commerce, rather than on prompting alone.
Key Points
- 1Deadline reports a hearing in the Tung Tung Tung Sahur rights lawsuit, bringing an AI-generated meme character into active court proceedings.
- 2NPR frames the California dispute around whether AI-generated characters can be used in games and other media without paying or acknowledging their creators.
- 3The reporting highlights unresolved questions about human authorship and commercial use of AI-generated characters.
Scoring Rationale
The hearing concerns an unresolved copyright and ownership question for AI-generated characters used commercially in games. Its direct subject is niche, but the outcome could be relevant to teams building, licensing, or training around generative-media assets.
Sources
Public references used for this report.
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