Chinese AI company MiniMax has released the open weights for its H3 video generation model but imposed licensing restrictions on users in the United States, European Union, United Kingdom, and South Korea. Developers in those regions must apply for a formal license before using the model, the Shanghai-based company said Monday.
The 33-billion-parameter H3 model processes text, images, video, and audio in a single prompt and can generate 4- to 15-second clips with stereo sound. A single prompt accepts up to nine reference images, three video clips, and three audio clips. Artificial Analysis ranked H3 first in Video Editing, second in Text-to-Video, and third in Image-to-Video benchmarks, making it the first open-weight model to lead a video generation ranking.
MiniMax attributed the regional carve-out to regulatory uncertainty and ongoing copyright-related legal proceedings. The company said it would review deployment scenarios and confirm compliance controls before authorizing usage in the restricted markets. API access through paid subscriptions remains available globally.
The release is not fully open. The 2K resolution module and H3-Context-IR, a component that translates prompts and reference material into a structured intermediate format, remain proprietary. Local use through ComfyUI is capped at 768p resolution. Users must handle context preparation themselves using MiniMax's published prompting guides. The license also limits commercial use to companies with under $20 million in annual revenue, a restriction that blocks larger enterprises from deploying the model without a separate agreement.
Takedowns on decensor adapters
The restrictions follow a separate controversy over fine-tuned versions of H3. Within days of the release, community members published LoRA adapters that removed the model's built-in content safety filters. MiniMax responded by issuing takedown notices against those projects on platforms including Hugging Face, with employees warning that failure to remove them would result in license revocation. Several decensor LoRAs have since been deleted.
The H3 launch comes on the same day ByteDance released its closed-weight Seedance 2.5 model, which generates 30-second clips with built-in audio. The contrast between the two companies reflects a growing divide in Chinese AI release strategies: MiniMax opted for conditional openness, while ByteDance kept its model entirely behind an API.
MiniMax has not specified what criteria it will use to approve or deny license applications from the restricted regions, nor has it provided a timeline for when those restrictions might be lifted.
Sources
South China Morning Post: China's MiniMax curbs overseas access to new AI video model over copyright disputes — https://www.scmp.com/tech/tech-trends/article/3362951/chinas-minimax-curbs-overseas-access-new-ai-video-model-over-copyright-disputes
The Decoder: China's MiniMax H3 is the first open model to top an AI video ranking — https://the-decoder.com/chinas-minimax-h3-is-the-first-open-model-to-top-an-ai-video-ranking/
MiniMax H3 model card on Hugging Face — https://huggingface.co/MiniMaxAI/MiniMax-H3
