Sora, the artificial intelligence video creator from OpenAI, has the potential to revolutionize industries and trigger job loss.
On Friday (2/16), OpenAI, through its Twitter account, introduced its newest AI system, Sora, which is derived from the Japanese word for “sky.”
The team of experts behind this technology, including researchers Tim Brooks and Bill Peebles, chose the name because it “evokes the idea of unlimited creative potential.”
OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman also showcased a number of Sora’s works generated from a single sentence or paragraph of command or prompt. The result is highly realistic videos akin to professionally shot footage.
In an interview, OpenAI experts said the company has not yet released Sora to the public as they are still trying to understand the dangers of the system.
OpenAI initially shared this technology with a small group of academics and external researchers who will test it as part of the “red team,” a term for efforts to uncover misuse of technology.
“The goal here is to provide an overview of what will happen so that the public can see the capabilities of this technology – and we can get feedback,” Brooks said.
Experts and observers also warn about its various potentials. Here are the details of those potentials:
Election Hoaxes
Oren Etzioni, a professor at the University of Washington specializing in AI, says this tool could be a quick and cheap way to create online disinformation while making it increasingly difficult to detect its falseness.
“I am genuinely concerned that something like this could affect narrowly contested elections,” he said, also the founder of True Media, a nonprofit organization that aims to identify online disinformation in political campaigns, as quoted from The New York Times.
OpenAI admits to marking videos produced by the Sora system with a watermark that identifies the video as AI-generated.
However, the company also acknowledges that this watermark can be removed, making it difficult to identify the creations.
Job Loss
Others warn about the potential for Sora to trigger the same effects as its predecessors, such as the AI photo-generating system, namely DALL-E and Midjourney.
In addition to complicating the identification of online disinformation, these platforms have led many digital artists to complain about the difficulty of finding work.
“We all laughed in 2022 when Midjourney first came out and said, ‘Oh, that’s funny’,” said Reid Southen, a film concept artist in Michigan.
“Now people are losing their jobs because of Midjourney,” he lamented.
Content industry transformation
Senior analyst at market research firm ABI Research Reece Hayden said Sora’s advantages in terms of duration and accuracy could have a significant impact on the digital entertainment market.
The result is new, personalized content that can be distributed across all channels.
“One clear use case is on TV; creating short scenes to support the narrative,” Hayden illustrated, as reported by CNN.
“The model is still limited, but it shows the direction of the market.”
