OpenAI’s new Sora app lets users generate and play AI videos

Marilyn Monroe in Game of Thrones? AI could soon get there

By Deni Ellis Béchard edited by Andrea Gawrylewski

I didn’t think it would happen like this. I imagined that Disney would be the first to test episodes generated by artificial intelligence using characters from libraries it owns or licenses. In an article last January, I wrote that AI would eventually allow us to generate new episodes of our favorite series, by putting our favorite stars – even those long gone, like Marilyn Monroe – in shows such as Game of Thrones. When I tested OpenAI’s Sora 2 after its October 30 release, this is exactly what I got: Monroe as a Targaryen riding a reading dragon Scientific American. (Watch the video here.) Although AI-generated on-demand TV hasn’t arrived yet, if the videos I’ve seen in Sora’s feed are any indication, users are determined to create it.

Unlike the original Sora, Sora 2 is not a simple video generation platform; It’s a social app with a TikTok-style feed of short AI-generated clips, and it lets you allow a “cameo” of yourself so your friends can drop your image into their skits — and revoke it later once you’ve seen too many videos of yourself running from the police or crying on game shows.

Sora 2 has remarkable powers of interpretation. For example, my short prompt asked for a woman who looks like Monroe riding a dragon while explaining that she would rather be a scientist than an incestuous Targaryen riding a dragon. Even though I didn’t come up with any scripts, Sora 2 generated a surprisingly witty one. Just as ChatGPT can generate entire scenarios in response to short, non-specific prompts, or follow long, detailed instructions, the new Sora can also invent a complex scene based on either.

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Within hours of Sora’s launch, critics called it “slop,” even as they generated their own content with the app, like when the YouTube channel Fireship posted a Sora-directed clip in which OpenAI CEO Sam Altman shouted, “Eat your slop, piggies” at people kneeling over bowls of pork slop. As thousands of users began experimenting with the app, the neglect took many forms: surreal memes, mash-ups, inside jokes, and especially riffs on Altman. Altman would steal someone’s art and run for the door or peek through the blinds in fear that Elon Musk would come and take over OpenAI. People also started making music videos of South Park which they compiled into episodes and published elsewhere. Twice I came across videos of the animated characters Rick and Morty cooking blue meth like Walt and Jesse in Break the bad. Although OpenAI initially said it would allow the use of copyrighted characters unless rights holders opted out, a wave of copyright complaints in the first two days prompted OpenAI to implement restrictions. On social media, although some people lamented the AI’s “negligence,” others complained that Sora was already dead – too limited for true creative expression.

If the vibe seems familiar, it’s because we’ve seen this before. At first, YouTube was an engine of infringement until a lawsuit forced it to fingerprint every upload. Twitch.tv and TikTok had their own accounts of copyright violations, and most of social media was a smorgasbord of sloppy content: food photos, filtered selfies, meme farms, and oversharing. For the platforms that survived, the arc moved from chaos to systems that regulated the use of copyrighted material and rewarded creators for producing original works. Sora will need the same boring plumbing if he wants to get out of anything new. But history tells us that platforms can evolve.

In a blog post this week, Altman explained that Sora was working to give “rights holders more granular control over character generation” and finding ways to monetize the platform and license fan fiction. But what will make people want to continue using Sora once the novelty wears off? Personality is the driving force behind much of today’s media: YouTubers, podcasters, old-fashioned celebrities, and even animated characters. Sora’s “cameo” system hints at an evolving etiquette of consent and co-ownership using the images of real people. Indeed, Altman, due to the large number of parodies, seems to have joined the pantheon of comic book characters alongside South Parkit’s Eric Cartman and family guyIt’s Peter Griffin. (To prevent unauthorized deepfakes, the platform blocks uploading images of real people who are not the user and puts a watermark on all videos.)

For all the talk about the waste generated by AI, what we may be underestimating is not the power of AI but that of human creativity. People at Mattel and Toys “R” Us are already using the technology to prototype characters, and Sora users can do the same with characters from their own imaginations. Some generate mini-episodes of alien invasion or colonization of Mars; and with better tools and dedicated channels, this type of work could turn into monetized series with their own story and beloved characters.

Other companies aren’t far behind: Meta recently released “Vibes,” an AI-generated social media feature that doesn’t include voices. Google’s Veo 3, which generates video with sound, offers Flow TV, which is much less interactive, and YouTube already integrates AI tools to support creators. I could easily imagine Disney or Netflix with a Sora-like interface that would allow viewers to create side stories from series and create prequels and sequels – and, most importantly, share those creations so they can watch and remix each other’s contributions. But users will want more than fanfiction, and Sora seems well-positioned to become on-demand television, allowing them to craft original content they want to watch and share. If history is any guide, the social media platforms that thrive are the ones that support and protect human creativity — in this case, the creativity needed to make the TV and movies you’ve always wished existed.

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