According to OpenAI, their popular AI video-generation tool, Sora, will be available later on Monday.
The AI video-generation model functions similarly to DALL-E, an AI tool from OpenAI that generates images: A high-definition video clip will be returned by Sora when a user types in a selected scene. Along with extending pre-existing videos and filling in missing frames, Sora can also create video clips based on still photographs. In February, the Microsoft-backed artificial intelligence startup, which gained widespread recognition last year due to ChatGPT’s viral success, unveiled Sora.
According to OpenAI’s YouTube livestream, the tool will be made available to users in the United States and the majority of other nations later today. The business has not yet provided a timeframe for when the tool will be made available in Europe, the United Kingdom, and a few other countries.
According to OpenAI, the function will be included in current ChatGPT memberships like Plus and Pro, so customers won’t need to pay extra for it. Features like Blend (which joins two sequences at the user’s request) and the ability to make an AI-generated film repeat indefinitely were shown by staff members on the livestream and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
Up until now, Sora has mostly been accessible to a select few safety testers, often known as “red-teamers,” who examine the model for flaws in areas like prejudice and false information.
In October, Reddit users questioned OpenAI executives about the release date of Sora, asking if it was being delayed for safety reasons or because of the amount of computation and time needed for inference. Kevin Weil, the product head of OpenAI, replied, “Need to scale compute, need to get safety/impersonation/other things right, and need to perfect the model!”
As OpenAI, we are clearly under a lot of scrutiny. During the webcast, Rohan Sahai, the product lead for OpenAI’s Sora, stated that the firm must stop unauthorized usage of the technology. However, we also wish to strike a balance with artistic expression.
With the $6.6 billion it raised from a wide range of Big Tech businesses and investment firms, OpenAI closed its most recent funding round in October with a valuation of $157 billion. Its total liquidity now exceeds $10 billion after receiving a $4 billion revolving line of credit.
All of this is part of OpenAI’s ambitious growth strategy, as the Microsoft-backed artificial intelligence startup competes for the largest share of the generative AI market, which is expected to reach $1 trillion in revenue within ten years, against Amazon-backed Anthropic, Elon Musk’s xAI, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon.
With the hiring of its first chief marketing officer earlier this month, OpenAI signaled its intention to increase its marketing budget in order to expand its user base. Additionally, OpenAI launched a search function in ChatGPT in October that puts it in a stronger position to compete with search engines like Google, Microsoft’s Bing, and Perplexity. This feature might potentially draw in more people who would have otherwise visited such websites to do web searches.
With Sora, the ChatGPT creator hopes to take on firms like Meta and Google, which introduced Lumiere in January, that provide AI tools for creating videos. Other firms, like Stability AI’s Stable Video Diffusion, offer comparable AI solutions.Additionally, Amazon has unveiled Create with Alexa, a concept that focuses on producing short-form animated children’s content that is prompt-based.
Now that chatbots and image generators have entered the consumer and commercial spheres, video may be the next frontier for generative AI. As significant political elections take place around the world, the new technologies raise severe worries about misinformation, even though some AI aficionados will be excited by the creative prospects. Data from machine learning company Clarity shows that the amount of AI-generated deepfakes produced has risen 900% annually.
In an attempt to provide a wider range of AI models, OpenAI has made multimodality—the blending of text, image, and video generation—a top priority.
The announcement of Sora’s release comes after protesters, who were worried about the way the ChatGPT creator treated artists, decided to leak what looked to be a copy of Sora.
In late November, some participants in OpenAI’s early access program for Sora—which reportedly included over 300 artists—published an open letter criticizing OpenAI for not being open enough or for not promoting the arts in ways other than marketing.
In their open letter, the protesters said, “Dear corporate AI overlords, we were granted access to Sora with the pledge to be early testers, red teamers, and creative partners.” However, we think that in order to convince the world that Sora is a helpful tool for artists, we are being tricked into art washing.
A small number of artists will be selected through a competition to have their Sora-created films screened, offering minimal compensation that is insignificant compared to the significant PR and marketing value OpenAI receives. The letter also stated that hundreds of artists contributed unpaid labor for OpenAI by testing bugs and providing feedback on Sora.
The open letter said, “We are not opposed to the use of AI technology as a tool for the arts (if we were, we probably wouldn’t have been invited to this program).” We disagree with the way this artist program has been implemented and the way the tool is developing in preparation for a potential public release. In the hopes that OpenAI will become more transparent, artist-friendly, and supportive of the arts beyond publicity stunts, we are sharing this with the world.
An OpenAI representative addressed the protesters’ conduct in a message to CNBC around the end of November.
According to the OpenAI spokesman at the time, hundreds of artists in our alpha have influenced Sora’s development by helping to prioritize new features and security measures. There is no requirement to utilize the tool or offer feedback; participation is entirely voluntary. We’re thrilled to provide these artists with free access, and we’ll keep helping them out with events, grants, and other initiatives.
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