First AI Supercreator Plagiarism Dispute: Creator of "Trust Tracker" Accuses "Blood Oath" of Idea Appropriation

And so, the first "traffic accident" occurred.

On October 14, AI super-creator Magic Xiaomi posted on Douyin, accusing Blood Oath of plagiarizing her comic drama The Trust Tracker. The two sides agreed to each list their evidence on Douyin two days later to prove their innocence.

(Screenshot of the latest episode of The Trust Tracker)

This controversy is unlike any "plagiarism" news of the past few years: neither side is a traditional "original author vs. adapter" — both are AI super-creators.

Both claim original scripts; their production tools are various AI models and agents; their visuals are not produced by live-action shooting but come from gacha pulls. For this entirely new mode of production organization, can it be recognized as original and enjoy copyright protection? And can one, in the capacity of an original creator, pursue legal channels to discuss whether infringement has occurred? Both the judicial and moral dimensions remain blank.

However, the development of productive forces will not stop and wait for the judiciary to catch up, and the same dilemma is already no isolated case in the industry: A Record of Mortal's Journey to Immortality has repeatedly been "freeloaded on" by the AI comic drama A Record of Mortal's Journey to Immortality: From One Jar of Spirit Grass to the Dao Ancestor, and the hit The Illustrated Record of Ten Thousand Demons is accused of wholesale copying of the core setting of the web novel From Slaying Demons and Exorcising Evil to Immortality — controversy abounds.

In early October 2026, the Heping District Court of Tianjin had just concluded the first case of "literary work adapted into AI comic drama," which finally provided the industry with some infringement support. In this case, the defendant, as a user of artificial intelligence, used another's complete literary work without authorization for secondary generation, which constitutes an act of adaptation in the sense of copyright law and falls within the scope of copyright protection of the original work. This means that the act of importing an original novel into AI for secondary rewriting will henceforth be classified as copyright infringement.

But the red line drawn by this precedent happens to not measure today's dispute between super-creators, because both sides claim their works are original.

Productive forces have already run ahead, while the judiciary lags behind. This is perhaps what is truly worth discussing about this "first case."

The Trust Tracker vs. Blood Oath: Thirteen Sets of Similar Allegations and Rebuttals

On October 16, the second round of "Huashan debate" officially began.

In Magic Xiaomi's ("plaintiff's") 7,000-word long post, she detailed 13 sets of comparisons, arguing that her original comic drama The Trust Tracker, during its serialization, was "month-by-month trope-melded" by the comic drama Blood Oath produced by Angel, including but not limited to: the male lead's image (black hair, slicked-back hair, black earrings, peacock-green eyes), the McLaren in-car scene, the value setting of assassinating the powerful and the bullies, the way of confessing identity, the suspense structure of the British male antagonist "only bluffing + the real culprit is the hunter organization," the snowy cabin anchor scene, and then the mad vampire, the "suited swordsman" long sword, the Qixi silver chain burn, the Flower God Festival and the London Flower Tide Festival, the nun look, the cross left-ear earring, etc.

"I feel very painful, because I think the degree of similarity 'has exceeded the scope of coincidence.' This matter has affected my creative mood," Magic Xiaomi said.

Angel's ("defendant's") response was equally tough. On October 16, she released 28 images and texts in one go, rebutting the above allegations one by one: "Before the dispute arose, I had never seen this blogger's work"; the accuser "only excerpts scattered frames and isolated scenes to determine plagiarism, which is unreasonable"; the so-called "call for supervision" is preset manipulation; if the same standard were applied, "your work could be used to compare against classic American dramas and judge you in reverse." She later added in response that the characters in the drama each have their own stance, the plot was cut due to length, production was limited by cost, and "there is no need to plagiarize anyone."

Below are the focal points of the two sides' dispute:

A legal officer at a major tech company said that among the collision of dozens of arguments from both sides, the most critical judicial element is only one: contact. The Tianjin case in October was also decided based on "constituting substantial similarity" + the confirmed act of importing the original novel into AI.

According to Article 12 of the Opinions on the Lawful Trial of Cases Involving Artificial Intelligence Disputes: "Where an AI user knows or should know of the existence of a prior work, uses AI to generate a work substantially similar to the prior work and has no reasonable defense, and the rights holder of the prior work requests that it bear infringement liability, the people's court shall support it."

Did Angel ("defendant") see Magic Xiaomi's ("plaintiff's") work between June and August, and did she import its content into AI for reverse creation?

According to the evidence chains posted by both sides, the plaintiff relayed that the defendant had "admitted having seen" her work; the defendant firmly insisted she had "never seen it." Each side sticks to its own account, and neither has definitive hard evidence.

This is the biggest suspense of the entire incident, and it directly determines the direction of all subsequent legal judgments.

(Screenshot of the latest episode of Blood Oath)

L1 trope-melding level. This case is representative. The focus of the two sides' dispute is at the element level — character design, props, anchor scenes, etc. — while the subject matter is completely different, making it a trope-melding dispute.

Magic Xiaomi's The Trust Tracker is an anthology series with a complete worldview and storyline; the male and female leads resolve different cases and complete their emotional elevation in the process of fighting together. The overall structure is similar to Kindaichi + Twilight.

Angel's Blood Oath, by contrast, leans more toward a typical female-oriented sweet-pet drama, with no major plotline, emotion first, basically a reskinned version of "domineering CEO falls in love with me," sugar and meat + high-frequency daily updates, and therefore has a broader mass base.

L2 framework level, typically the dispute between The Illustrated Record of Ten Thousand Demons and From Slaying Demons and Exorcising Evil to Immortality.

At present, the AI comic drama "The Illustrated Record of Ten Thousand Demons" has been updated to its thirteenth season, with cumulative views exceeding 6 billion, locking in in advance a hit case of the year for Hongguo. The original novel of "The Illustrated Record of Ten Thousand Demons" is the Fanqie Novel "That Demon Is Lord Jiang!", and its plot framework is highly similar to Yuewen's popular web novel "From Slaying Demons and Exorcising Evil to Immortality"—for example, the worldview of a world in chaos with demons and monsters, the point-adding system of slaying demons to seize cultivation/steal lifespan, the setting of the Demon Suppression Bureau, the opening where the protagonist is on the verge of death and kills a demon with a blade to survive, and the design of the power system all show a high degree of similarity; the only difference is that the protagonist's gender has been switched.

However, because the original work of "From Slaying Demons and Exorcising Evil to Immortality" was also reported to have heavily borrowed from the Japanese manga "Kaiju No. 8," and the author, the platform, and the judiciary have all made no statement, the controversy remains confined to readers' discussion circles.

L3 pixel-level cases, such as "A Mortal's Cultivation: From a Jar of Spirit Herbs to the Dao Ancestor," which rides on the fame of "A Record of a Mortal's Journey to Immortality," appear somewhat brazen.

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Not only is it highly similar in story framework and expression—for example, the title directly uses "A Mortal's Cultivation," while the male lead is named Shu Han rather than Han Li; its original novel is the Fanqie Novel "From a Jar of Spirit Herbs to the Immortal Realm's Dao Ancestor," which is also a mortal-stream novel, and the protagonist is likewise a mountain village youth with a wasted spiritual root who rises against the odds by relying on a mysterious jar that replicates spirit medicine—highly identical to Han Li's "four spiritual roots + a small bottle that ripens spirit medicine," amounting to a pixel-level copy, somewhat reminiscent of the pirated novels of the past labeled "by Jin Yong."

The drama has been updated to its twentieth season, with more than a thousand episodes in total.

In the early days of the web novel and comic industries, they likewise faced content explosion and copyright disputes. The solution at the time was to establish an anti-plagiarism committee system within platforms, namely adopting a method in which authors and readers report and independent editors review and adjudicate, so as to constrain plagiarism.

On the judicial side, this problem is even more obvious. At present, the cost of an ordinary comic drama (non-premium) has been compressed to the level of ten thousand yuan. If one goes through judicial channels, court fees + lawyer fees + third-party appraisal + a trial period of more than half a year—the comprehensive cost is already far higher than the infringing output value. If the drama is not a big hit, it may not even be worth suing over.

This is also the reason why borrowing has become a trend in current comic drama production.

Fundamentally, the tools of adjudication have not kept up.

It is worth noting that platforms have begun to "set rules" for AI comic dramas: starting from August 17, 2026, Fanqie Novel implemented new regulations requiring AI comic dramas to obtain formal authorization from the original works, and a group of creators who had previously relied on low-cost mass production of content were forced to stop updating.

On the copyright side, the authorization threshold for platform IP is tightening, and legal departments are filling the gaps.

But the boundary between "super-creation original vs. super-creation original" remains undrawn—and this case is precisely the first public case in this blank zone.

The Tianjin Heping case has already proven that the judiciary is capable of drawing a line for "feeding entire books to AI"; but no one has yet made a scale for "high-concept similarity." The law will not automatically keep up just because technology runs fast; someone must always draw the boundary—which inevitably makes one wonder: will it be the next judicial precedent, platform rules, or industry self-discipline?

This "first case" has no winners, but it may be a starting point: when the first batch of "super-creators" begin to scrutinize each other, the industry truly begins to discuss its own rules. The ruler may be late, but it cannot remain absent forever.

This article comes from the WeChat public account "Needle Point," author: Professor Du, published by 36Kr with authorization.