OpenAI, the developers of the immensely popular ChatGPT, have developed a startling new artificial intelligence product.
Sora is a new development that can turn sentence-long text prompts into disturbingly realistic videos. As the OpenAI website puts it, “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.”
Last year, there was a viral clip of an AI-generated Will Smith eating spaghetti. The clip seemed to give a sigh of relief to everyone who was worried about AI, because, although entertaining, it did not look realistic in the slightest.
Well, take that sigh of relief back, because Sora is going to change AI forever. This new technology is bound to be the next big step in the production of AI. The sample videos that OpenAI continues to release weekly can be easily mistaken for being real. The implications of this new technology are unimaginable. The fact that AI-generated videos were able to evolve from a cartoonish and weird clip of Will Smith eating spaghetti to incredibly realistic text-to-image videos shows how fast these machines are learning.
One of the biggest things that worries people about Sora is its use as a source of information. Because the videos are so realistic, they could easily be used to spread misinformation. To prevent this, OpenAI has put a set of safety measures in place, hoping that this technology will not be used with malicious intent. The videos are watermarked with OpenAI’s logo to show that the videos are AI-generated. The machine also rejects text prompts that do not comply with OpenAI’s policies, meaning there will be no AI-generated videos that include violence, sexual content, or hateful imagery. Sora also will not generate images of anyone’s likeness, meaning that there will be no updated Will Smith spaghetti video. IPs are also off-limits to keep copyright claims at a minimum.
Despite these safety measures, Sora is still a dangerous technology. In 2023, Hollywood experienced both an actors’ and writers’ strike in which AI was one of the main topics of discussion. With the development of Sora, Hollywood will now have to regulate its use even more, because artificial intelligence can generate blockbuster-worthy images that could easily invade the film industry.
Sora must also be regulated in legal and political landscapes. With an election on the horizon, misinformation is all the more dangerous. False videos spread across the Internet like wildfire, and having an AI model that can create motion images out of literally just words is extremely, extremely dangerous. Concerns about AI are constantly rising, and Sora is another machine to be worried about.
As we move forward in this world of constantly new technology, Sora seems to be a monumental step forward for AI. The scariest part? This is the worst that this technology is going to be. It only goes up from here.
