Chatcasso took first place in the BNB hackathon in Seoul in December last year and received prize money worth $5,000. Binance, the largest exchange in the world, was accused of copying Chatcasso idea to create Bicasso, an AI-powered NFT generator.
On March 1, Binance CEO Changpeng ‘CZ‘ Zhao announced Bicasso, an AI-powered NFT generator that allows creative images to be automatically transformed into NFTs. However, ggoma, a representative of South Korean blockchain-based community platform Steemhunt claimed that Binace copied Chatcasso and launched its own product just two months after Chatcasso won first place in the BNB Chain hackathon.
“A big company like Binance copying everything down to the name? It’s not only unethical, but it’s also confusing for users. The names are so similar that it’s hard to tell them apart.”
Binance then dismissed the accusation of plagiarism. A Bianance spokesperson said that Bicasso is an experimental project built by a small team at Binance; NFT and AI are also popular concepts that are researched and developed by many companies. Binance insists that the similarity does not mean plagiarism: “Despite the similarities, after conducting an internal review, we’re confident that Bicasso was designed and developed independently more than two weeks before the BNB hackathon.”
Binance and BNB Chain operate separately, and the Binance development team is not involved in BNB Chain hackathon, the crypto exchange added. The name of Bicasso was inspired by the OpenAI’s Dall-E, refering to artist Dali, and said “our team loves this concept.”
Binance’s Bicasso became a hit among NFT investors as it recorded 10,000 mints in 2.5 hours. CZ emphasized the importance of dismissing fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) and advised investors to ignore false accusations that surface occasionally.