Let me set the scene.
It’s late. I’m deep in a creative project, running on coffee and whatever’s left of my patience, and I’m using the same tools everybody uses because — let’s be honest — that’s just what we do. We download what’s popular, click “Agree” on the terms we don’t read, and get to work. Easy. Convenient. Free, or close enough to it.
Except nothing’s actually free. And lately, two of the internet’s favorite tools have been making that very clear.
I’m talking about ChatGPT and CapCut. Two darlings of the creator world. Two apps I used to swear by. And two platforms I’ve had to walk away from — for very different reasons, but with the same gut feeling: these companies don’t have your back.
Part One: ChatGPT and the Backbone Problem
Here’s what happened. The Trump administration wanted unrestricted access to AI — no guardrails, no questions asked, just raw power handed over to the Pentagon for whatever they deemed “lawful.” Mass surveillance. Autonomous weapons. The full menu.
Anthropic, the company behind Claude AI, said no. They drew two hard lines: their AI would not be used for mass surveillance of U.S. citizens, and it would not be used for fully autonomous weapons. The Pentagon pushed back. Negotiations dragged on for months. And when the government issued an ultimatum, Anthropic didn’t blink. The Pentagon wanted Anthropic to agree to a new contract allowing the military to deploy Claude for “all lawful use” — Anthropic refused.
The fallout was immediate. The Trump administration ordered federal agencies and military contractors to halt business with Anthropic after the company refused to let the Pentagon use its technology without restrictions. They got blacklisted. Labeled a supply chain risk — a designation typically reserved for foreign adversaries. Trump called it a “disastrous mistake.” Hegseth went on X talking about warfighters being held hostage. The whole thing got loud, fast.
And while all that was going down? OpenAI struck a deal with the Pentagon just hours after the Trump administration’s order.
That’s the part that gets me.
OpenAI — the company behind ChatGPT, the tool half the creator world uses for scripts, captions, ideation, all of it — rushed a deal to fill the gap Anthropic left when Anthropic actually stood for something. Ten toes down. By CEO Sam Altman’s own admission, OpenAI’s deal with the Department of Defense was “definitely rushed,” and “the optics don’t look good.”
And look, OpenAI says they have guardrails. They say there are red lines. But here’s the thing about saying you have limits and actually having limits — one of those requires receipts. Legal experts have been blunt: OpenAI has released only snippets of the contract loaded with PR-speak and national security jargon. Without being able to verify the company’s claims, Altman’s pitch to the world comes down to one premise: Trust me — along with Trump and Pete Hegseth — to do the right thing.
Trust Pete Hegseth. The man who called Anthropic’s refusal to hand over an AI “arrogance and betrayal.”
Yeah. I’m good.
Even people inside OpenAI weren’t buying it. A senior member of OpenAI’s robotics team resigned, citing concerns about how the company moved forward with a recently announced partnership with the U.S. Department of Defense, saying “surveillance of Americans without judicial oversight and lethal autonomy without human authorization are lines that deserved more deliberation than they got.”
When your own people walk out the door over a deal, that tells you everything about the deal.
The contrast is stark. One company got blacklisted by the federal government for standing on principle. The other got a contract for moving out of the way. I know which one I trust with my creative work — and it ain’t the one that folded under pressure from people who want to build killer robots with no human in the loop.
Part Two: CapCut and the Creative Heist You Already Agreed To
Now let’s talk about CapCut. Different vibe. Same energy.
CapCut is slick. It’s intuitive, it’s free, it makes you feel like a professional editor even when you’re shooting on a cracked phone screen at 11pm. I get it. I got it. For a long time, it was my go-to.
Then I actually read the terms.
As of June 12, 2025, CapCut — owned by ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok — now claims extensive, perpetual rights to use, modify, and distribute your content, even for commercial purposes. This includes client work, internal drafts, branded edits, and personal projects.
Read that again.
Client work. Internal drafts. Personal projects.
CapCut now has the right to use, modify, distribute, and profit from your content — forever — and without compensating or notifying you. Yes, CapCut owns the rights to drafts and private projects you never published on the app.
That video you made for a brand deal? Theirs. That rough cut you saved but never posted? Theirs. That thing you made, deleted, and thought was gone forever?
What happens if you delete your video? CapCut can continue using and monetizing it. The license is perpetual and not revoked by deletion.
So let me translate that out of legal-speak: you built something, you put your face and your creativity and your time into it, and somewhere buried in a terms of service update that nobody announced, you handed it over. No payment. No credit. No say in how it gets used. ByteDance and its affiliates can display or promote your content across platforms, possibly in promotional or commercial formats — and these rights persist even if the original content is removed from the app or the account is deleted.
Your work is now being sublet to CapCut’s marketing team for god knows what. And you won’t see one sheckle.
The Compare & Contrast Nobody Asked For (But Everybody Needs)
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: CapCut isn’t an outlier. They’re just the one that finally got caught in the light.
Meta (Instagram/Facebook) has similar language baked in. Upload a reel, and Meta can use it in ads across their platforms. They’ve been doing this for years, and most creators just shrugged because the reach felt worth it. Similar controversies have rocked platforms like YouTube, where Google uses videos to train its AI models, and Instagram, where Meta’s data policies allow content reuse.
TikTok — CapCut’s big brother, essentially — operates under ByteDance the same way. You post, they own the usage rights. The algorithm gives, and the algorithm takes.
Adobe — which many creators have fled to after the CapCut news — had its own moment in 2024 when users noticed updated terms suggesting Adobe could use work made in their apps for AI training. Adobe walked some of it back after the backlash, but the instinct was there. The instinct is always there.
The pattern is the same everywhere: build something people love, make it free or cheap enough to be sticky, then quietly update the fine print once you’ve got enough users that leaving feels painful.
Final Thought
Content creators need to be more aware of the tools they use to create, or risk being taken advantage of in exchange for access and convenience.
That’s it. That’s the whole thing.
We’ve been conditioned to click “Agree” and get on with it. The interfaces are clean. The tools are powerful. The price is right. And while we’re busy making the content that builds our brands, feeds our families, and tells our stories — the platform is making a different kind of deal entirely.
Your creativity is not just your art. It’s your leverage, your intellectual property, your livelihood. And the tools you use to make it are not neutral. They have owners. Those owners have interests. And those interests are not always aligned with yours.
Read the terms. Know who you’re dealing with. Choose accordingly.
Because at the end of the day, the only person who should be eating off your work… is you.
