OpenAI's Sora, an almost unbelievable text-to-video generator, has been making waves since it was announced. In February, Sora was made available to a select group of "red teamers" for security and stability testing, as well as to a limited number of visual artists, designers, and filmmakers for feedback on its video generation capabilities.
Despite the excitement and potential applications, Sora is not yet available to the general public, and no official release date or pricing information has been provided. However, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, OpenAI's CTO Mira Murati revealed that Sora will be publicly available later this year and that the company plans to eventually incorporate sound into the videos, enhancing their realism.
The introduction of Sora has sparked the usual discussions about the potential impact on creative industries and the risks associated with AI-generated content, including misinformation and the ethical implications of creating realistic videos. OpenAI has obligatorily emphasized its commitment to safety, working with experts to test the model for harmful content and developing tools to detect misleading videos.
Coming soon to a workflow near you: Sora (and a slew of other tools) that create video (and audio) from text that is ready for primetime. This will, without question, have a huge impact on every aspect of human communication – from deepfakes to legitimate production (and everything in between).
There's no point in discussing which particular tool will be better or worse or to question the ethics of one particular company over the other. There will be good users and bad users, good intentions and bad intentions. Get ready, because nothing is going to stop our transition from "traditional production" to what I am calling "social production," where people with absolutely no training in audio/video production will simply describe what they want to see and hear and AI will do the rest.
As always, your thoughts and comments are both welcome and encouraged. Just reply to this email. -s
ABOUT SHELLY PALMER
Shelly Palmer is the Professor of Advanced Media in Residence at Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and CEO of The Palmer Group, a consulting practice that helps Fortune 500 companies with technology, media and marketing. Named he covers tech and business for , is a regular commentator on CNN and writes a popular . He's a , and the creator of the popular, free online course, . Follow or visit .
