OpenAI teases 'Sora,' its new text-to-video AI model
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Want to see a turtle riding a bike across the ocean? Now, generative AI can animate that scene in seconds.
OpenAI on Thursday unveiled its new text-to-video model Sora, which can generate videos up to a minute long based on whatever prompt a user types into a text box. Though it's not yet available to the public, the AI company's announcement roused a frenzy of reactions online.
AI enthusiasts were quick to brainstorm ideas around the potential of this latest technology, even as others raised immediate concern over how its accessibility might erode human jobs and further the spread of digital disinformation.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman solicited prompt ideas on X and generated a series of videos including the aforementioned aquatic cyclists, as well as a cooking video and a couple of dogs podcasting on a mountain.
"We are not making this model broadly available in our products soon," a spokesperson for OpenAI wrote in an email, adding that the company is sharing its research progress now to gain early feedback from others in the AI community.
The company, with its popular chatbot ChatGPT and text-to-image generator DALL-E, is one of several tech startups leading the generative AI revolution that began in 2022. It wrote in a blog post that Sora can generate with accuracy multiple characters and different types of motion.
"We're teaching AI to understand and simulate the physical world in motion, with the goal of training models that help people solve problems that require real-world interaction," OpenAI wrote in the post.
But Sora may struggle to capture the physics or spatial details of a more complex scene, which can lead it to generate something illogical (like a person running in the wrong direction on a treadmill), morph a subject in unnatural ways, or even cause it to disappear out of thin air, the company said in its blog post.
Still, many of the demonstrations shared by OpenAI showcased hyper-realistic visual details that could make it difficult for casual internet users to distinguish AI-generated video from real-life footage. Examples included a drone shot of waves crashing into a craggy Big Sur coastline under the glow of a setting sun and a clip of a woman strolling down a bustling Tokyo street still damp with rain.
As deepfaked media of celebrities, politicians and private figures becomes increasingly prevalent online, the ethical and safety implications of a world in which anyone can create high-quality video of anything they can imagine — especially during a presidential election year, and amid tense global conflicts fraught with opportunities for disinformation — are daunting.
The Federal Trade Commission on Thursday proposed rules aimed at making it illegal to create AI impressions of real people by extending protections it is putting in place around government and business impersonation.
"The agency is taking this action in light of surging complaints around impersonation fraud, as well as public outcry about the harms caused to consumers and to impersonated individuals," the FTC wrote in a news release. "Emerging technology — including AI-generated deepfakes — threatens to turbocharge this scourge, and the FTC is committed to using all of its tools to detect, deter, and halt impersonation fraud."
Prompt: Several giant woolly mammoths approach treading through a snowy meadow, their long woolly fur lightly blows in the wind as they walk, snow-covered trees and dramatic snowcapped mountains in the distance, midafternoon light with wispy clouds and a sun high in the distance creates a warm glow, the low camera view is stunning, capturing the large furry mammal with beautiful photography, depth of field.OpenAI
OpenAI said it is working to build tools that can detect when a video is generated by Sora, and plans to embed metadata, which would mark the origin of a video, into such content if the model is made available for public use in the future.
The company also said it is collaborating with experts to test Sora for its ability to cause harm via misinformation, hateful content and bias.
A spokesperson for OpenAI told NBC News it will then publish a system card describing its safety evaluations, as well as the model's risks and limitations.
"Despite extensive research and testing, we cannot predict all of the beneficial ways people will use our technology, nor all the ways people will abuse it," OpenAI said in its blog post. "That's why we believe that learning from real-world use is a critical component of creating and releasing increasingly safe AI systems over time."
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AI enthusiasts were quick to brainstorm ideas around the potential of this latest technology, even as others raised immediate concern over how its accessibility might erode human jobs and further the spread of digital disinformation.
The jobs it will take are those on the high end of the spectrum, as opposed to the low-end jobs that technology usually eliminates.
The disinformation is most likely to be baked in, via the creators.
That being said, it is here to stay.
AI in general eliminates far more jobs than it makes. And, as you note, traditional white collar jobs are also affected. This has been a concern for at least a decade when machine learning started delivering impressive results in recognizing images. There is no stopping this. Companies will necessarily use it because their competitors will.
In result, how do we deal with the high unemployment and the consequences of same (i.e. wage deflation, poverty, crime, increased social programs, ...)?
This will force a change of paradigm from work to live to something else. It will be a very rough transition.
All almost all technological innovations eliminate jobs.
Not all companies will, because the tools will be put behind paywalls. My employer has already told me they won't adapt MS Copilot because it costs $30/mo/user billed annually. And with users that I have to keep explaining how to copy and paste they won't be early adapters of AI even though they would probably benefit the most.
It's a shift we've seen before from manufacturing to service - it may be rough, but it will also be temporary as new services start up to accommodate people (hopefully) who have more time to spend away from work.
The rate of elimination vs. the rate of opening new jobs, however, is the concern.
Just a matter of time. When the costs of technology are less than the cost of employees and the functionality is equivalent, the switch to technology is inevitable.
I wish that were true. I do not see it.
I haven't heard of anyone being downsized for AI yet. Everyone is so focused on it, it may become a political issue if your fear here becomes eventualized. In fact everyone is so focused on it they are trying to push rules and laws so these worst things don't happen. They may eventually, but hopefully it will make it a much slower, and therefore a much more manageable, process.
It will only be inevitable when it's baked in to something everyone already uses. Had MS added Copilot to O365 applications without additional costs we get used to using it and businesses would be less upset when costs rose a bit to compensate.
IF this goes as you predict and mass layoffs happen, industrious people will not just lay around... they will find something to occupy their time that makes them money. The explosion of the gig economy is but one example. They won't all be low paying jobs either.
My comments were directed at the future.
But in terms of the present, where do employees go when their jobs are eliminated by Robotic Process Automation? The retirement of the boomers helps soften this blow today because so many jobs are eliminated through retirement. But when the mass exodus of boomers dies down and the substantial replacement of jobs via technology increases, what will happen?
Quite true. What percentage of the workforce would you deem as industrious? And I do believe that most people will scramble to find a way to make money, but they will be competing with many others and likely for lower wages.
While I clearly do not want to see this happen, I am not seeing how we get out of it.
I know. My point is that AI can already eliminate jobs in multiple fields, but it hasn't yet happened. Mostly because people don't really want it to happen. Will it happen? Probably...
Various other career paths open up, usually with training projects. Perhaps with the shortages in health care the government could incentivize people training and working in those jobs. Not everyone will be cut out for that, but there are other fields in green tech, entertainment and multiple other fields that offer opportunities that do pay well.
The same percentage of the workforce as there is now. Why would that change?
Again, this will about how AI is managed. IF (and I realize it's a big if) jobs people leave are taken over by AI processes this hurts no one. IF all of a sudden, Microsoft and other big tech companies dump all their coders for their AI we might have some issues. Again those can be mitigated with training in other industries.
AI will not take over arts & entertainment in my lifetime. Right now it's a tool, but it won't take over. We've already been using AI tools for nearly a decade in photography and video. The tools just get fancier and faster. The workers are organizing to stop job loss where studios are trying, unsuccessfully, to replace them.
Automation in general eliminates far more jobs than it makes.
Maybe we should ask if it is wise to allow any means of production to be owned by individuals.
I'm not sure Gen Z would agree.
AI will make the problem of overpopulation even worse
It will indeed exacerbate the problem.