Brainrot Copyright: Could Tung Tung Tung Sahur Become the Next Mickey Mouse?

Italian Brainrot, for the uninitiated, is a genre of AI slop featuring a cast of chimeric characters with distinct personalities and narratives. There’s Bombardino Crocodilo, a creature with the head of a crocodile and the body of a WWII-era twin prop bomber; Ballerina Cappuccina, a dancer with a cappuccino mug for a head; and Lirili Larila, a Dali-esque elephant-shaped cactus in sandals who can control time.

Visit hilogame.news for more information.

They appeal, in the main, to children, although their origin story is fairly murky. We were speaking at VICE about how interesting it was to have a new paradigm in contrast to the extreme corporate copyright of Disney, Pixar and the like: characters that emerge from the ether and belong to nobody. But then we met a Frenchman in Berlin who torpedoed that notion when he told us about a new venture, Mementum Lab. They represent a range of brainrot characters, including Tung Tung Tung Sahur (a wooden plank holding a baseball bat), possibly the most infamous.

Being cynical, you could see this budding industry as opportunism: applying traditional copyright law to characters churned out by generative AI that has been trained on the unpaid labor of millions of artists. Or, you could see it as the power for ordinary people to produce interesting characters from a highly Darwinistic pool of creativity. You can’t argue with the fact that the Tung Tung Tung Sahur character resonates with lots of people and was created by an actual person. Does it matter what tool was used to make it?

We spoke to Eben Jeda, co-founder of Mementum Labs, to get the lowdown on emergent corporate brainrot.

VICE: Firstly, could you give us an overview of what Mementum Labs does?
Eben Jeda: When I discovered the Italian brainrot phenomenon, for me it was the aesthetic shift of 2025. I was waiting for the perfect meeting between AI and virality, and when I saw Italian brainrots I was like, ‘that’s it.’

What interests me is the decentralized curation. In the past, big IPs were built from studios like Disney—characters like Mickey Mouse or whatever. But this is a movement curated by the internet. It’s the community who decides on the characters and the stories around them. So I started to contact the creators of these characters, and I discovered that they’re often young people from Indonesia or Brazil—TikTok creators with a huge community but no monetization. And I was thinking about the attention economy in order to understand the distribution around the meme, because it’s very complicated. Even before AI, it was complicated to create a proper IP—with a meme, for example—for a character of your own.

There’s a blind spot around AI when it comes to copyright. For me, it’s the same as the paradigm shift with photography. In the beginning, people said photographs weren’t copyrightable because there [was no artistic merit in] pushing a button. I think it’s the same shift in terms of IP. 

We decided to create Mementum Lab with other artists, lawyers, and researchers to create a legal scope around [AI characters]. We work with the authors, and we’ve started to contact some big companies who use these characters to inform them that there are artists behind them.

Spaghetti Tualetti: the cutting edge of character creation in the age of generative AI.

Last year, brainrot was a great example of something that could not be copyrighted because it emerges from crowdsourcing, but you’re saying the exact opposite—that these characters have specific creators. With Italian brainrot, for example, there’s a vernacular and a visual aesthetic that they all share, but they come from different creators. How do you separate those aspects?
The phenomenon of Italian brainrot is not copyrightable because it’s open source and decentralized, curated by community. But inside of that there are characters who are from different sensibilities, aesthetics, concepts ,and creators. Italian brainrot is like a medium, and AI is a tool to [access] this medium and its ecosystem. But it’s a new land of expression for Gen Alpha. For example, [AI artist] Noxa uses it as a political weapon in Indonesia to critique the corruption in their country. A lot of brainrot [characters] are inspired by Indonesian politicians. For me it’s obvious that these are contemporary artists.

We’re also creating the framework to understand what is copyrightable or not. Of course, writing a simple prompt on ChatGPT by saying, ‘hey, shoot me an Italian brainrot character’ doesn’t make you an artist. But if you make 60 characters with a kind of coherence between them all, that’s different. There’s concept, aesthetic, mythology. In ten or 20 years, people will totally understand this, because most people with internet access between the ages of 6 and 12 right now will have nostalgia for it. I’m sure that the memes are some of the great artworks and masterpieces of our time. That’s my thesis.

If brainrot is the medium, what is the analog? You talked about photography being the analog, but photography does not have an explicit aesthetic, whereas brainrot does.
Maybe brainrot is more of an art movement, like impressionism or abstract expressionism. For me, it’s very funny and viral conceptual art. So the medium is AI—but so is prompting and virality, because there is the question of momentum too. Creating a brainrot is not enough, you have to make it viral. That’s a part of the process. The creation of the assets is just the first part of the process. Then you have to have the right momentum to know which character will work or not. I think it’s part of contemporary artistic skills.

“I’m sure that the memes are some of the great artworks and masterpieces of our time”

The Big Man Himself, Tung Tung Tung Sahur.

It’s like technologically accelerated Darwinism in terms of the characters themselves, because you could say the same about Mickey Mouse. There were lots of people making cartoon characters in the 1920s and 1930s, but only the successful ones endured, and they probably shared a pretty similar style as well. But that did not mean that they would be successful. Looking at your characters, Icarina Machinova is very similar to Ballerina Cappuccina, for example. Why isn’t that copyright infringement?
There is a war around the authorship of these characters. The guys who invent the name aren’t the same guys that create the first concept, and the version that goes viral is usually done by another creator again. So it’s complicated, because there are like three authors to each character. The name is part of the IP, the visual asset is part of the IP, and the concept and the virality are part of the IP. So there are a lot of remixes, and all characters are not equal in terms of IP. Some are very strong, and others are very weak, but that’s why we’re only working with two creators right now. There are brainrot creators who come to us and ask for representation, but often they’re just adaptations. Or they’re brainrots with a racist background that probably would be copyrightable, but we don’t want to represent them.

You don’t want to represent racist brainrot characters. That I understand. Have you made much money for your clients yet?
There has been some good headway but also some big overheads, especially paying a US lawyer and a lawyer in Europe. So for now it’s a balance, but the authors are winning big money in terms of their age and geographic location. They have the same goal as Mementum Lab, in that we really want to create the next Pokémon or Pixar—but from AI, plus virality. So we’re investing the money in order to scale and be well known as the only IP owner. We have some contracts coming with a big video company that I can’t share right now, but there will be some announcements in the near future that I think will play an important shift in the way people think about IP.

“Maybe brainrot is more of an art movement, like impressionism or abstract expressionism”

What’s the criteria for something you would consider for IP? I could make five million characters this afternoon if I wanted to, if I had the processing power and an image generation subscription. What in the future is going to define something that is worth protecting?
I think firstly there is the originality of the name. Then you have the aesthetic concepts and the originality of the characters. The generation of the characters is a consequence of this, so of course the prompt is important, but for us it’s not the most important thing. You can make 200 prompts or two prompts. It’s the same thing, as long as your concepts are original and you can prove that you’ve done a lot of research into the concept and the originality. 

There is also the virality. If you start from nothing and your character goes very viral because you play with the algorithm and the momentum, I think that’s also a good metric. And if you create another movement inside that movement—for example, Sahur and Tungsten characters are a sub movement inside Italian brainrot—that’s also a strong thing. 

These metrics are good criteria for now, but it will probably evolve with the new tools. In six months, anybody will be able to make a deep fake with a simple photograph or video. So I’m curious to see what will happen. I think technical skills will become less and less significant in terms of authorship. As with photography or videography in film, it was very complicated to create very sharp cinematic images before the DSLR, Canon, 5D… When those tools appeared on the market, it democratized everything. You can make a feature film with your iPhone now, and the originality of your storytelling or editing will be the thing that stands out more than the proper technical skills.

cappuccino assassino Brr Brr Patapim Tob Tobi Tob Tob Tobi Tob

When all of these characters emerged, everybody was using certain image generation platforms and they have a certain shared aesthetic. But now, if I was to create a new brainrot character, it would be a simulacra of the original form. The technology has advanced a huge amount since these characters were created. Do you think that that moment in time has gone? Do you think that the changes in technology have some relationship to the character creation and the IP?
Yes. I’m certain of this, both in terms of aesthetic and distribution. I think this movement is a very TikTok-native movement, but I have a feeling that the momentum in two or three years will come from other distribution platforms. TikTok is good for Gen Z and Gen Alpha, but maybe some adult memes will start to appear…

But to answer your question, the evolution of tools shapes the trajectory of art history. When the photographer appeared the painter moved on from simple portraits to create abstraction and impressionism. Technology has always shaped the aesthetic of art. 

Brainrot OnlyFans characters. What a horrible dystopian thought. Who would be your dream brand partners for your characters that you represent?
I think we all have different ideas. Noxa would love to make something with IShowSpeed. For me, maybe Tung Tung Tung Sahur could be the mascot for the FIFA World Cup, or the star of a feature Hollywood film. It’s less about one collaboration with a particular company, and more about creating the legacy around your ecosystem.

“Creating a brainrot is not enough, you have to make it viral. That’s a part of the process”

Who will win the royalty battle between Labubu and Tung Tung?
I don’t know. Money depends on a lot of metrics, in my opinion. Maybe we are not the best to earn a lot of money and to milk every market existing in the attention economy, but in terms of visual impact and art history, I’m sure we are going to win this battle. In the short term, of course, they are more aggressive in terms of strategy. But I think we will win in the long run.

They may win the financial war, but you will win the culture war.
Exactly.

How much do you see this as part of your art practice? And how much do you just see it as a chance to change career direction and start a successful business? Or is it a combination?
I think a lot of artists, especially in contemporary art right now, are CEO of a small company, and the distribution is aimed at very wealthy people in a very niche area. My dream is to escape from this limited reality, and to create a new distribution and economy around digital art and meme culture.

Follow Ben on Instagram: @ben_ditto

The post Brainrot Copyright: Could Tung Tung Tung Sahur Become the Next Mickey Mouse? appeared first on VICE.

Read full story at source