BNB Chain hackathon winner accuses Binance of stealing AI-powered NFTs idea
Crypto exchange Binance has been accused of “blatantly” copying the winner of the BNB Chain hackathon after launching Bicasso — an AI-based nonfungible token (NFT) creation tool. Binance allegedly ripped off a tool created by Chatcasso just two months after awarding them first prize in a BNB Chain hackathon held in Seoul between Dec. 17 to 19, 2022.
On March 1, Binance CEO Changpeng ‘CZ’ Zhao announced the launch of Bicasso, an artificial intelligence (AI) product that can be used to “turn your creative visions into NFTs with AI.” However, community member ggoma believes Binance copied his project Chatcasso and shipped it as their own offering.
"Keep building " - @cz_binance said.What he DIDN'T say - "If you guys build it well, we'll blatantly copy it and ship it as our product! "Story of Binance stealing our project we won 1st place at the BNB Chain hackathon https://t.co/ejc5Z7w9o1
Binance, on the other hand, dismissed the accusations of stealing. Speaking to Cointelegraph, a Binance spokesperson said that Bicasso is an experimental project built by a small team at Binance as a test and that NFTs and AI are common concepts being worked on by many industry players.
Chatcasso won the first prize in the BNB Chain hackathon for creating an AI-powered tool for creating NFTs and won $5,000 in Binance USD (BUSD).
However, ggoma was shocked to see Binance lauch a similar platform within a span of two months, as he stated:
In addition, ggoma shared screenshots of the two projects in an attempt to showcase the similarities between the user interface and capabilities.
Binance, however, maintains that the similarities does not imply theft of ideas. The exchange’s spokesperson told Cointelegraph:
Moreover, Binance and BNB Chain operate
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