OpenAI releases AI video generator Sora but limits how it depicts people

SAN FRANCISCO– OpenAI has publicly released its new artificial intelligence video generator Sora but the company doesn’t allow most users to depict people as it monitors for patterns of abuse.

Users of a premium version of OpenAI’s flagship product ChatGPT can now use Sora to instantly create AI-generated videos based on written commands. Featured examples include high-quality video clips of sumo wrestling bears and a cat sipping coffee.

But only a small number of invited testers can use Sora to create videos of people, while OpenAI works to “address concerns about similarity obfuscation and deepfakes,” the company said in a blog post.

Text-to-video AI tools like Sora have been pitched as a way to cut costs in creating new entertainment and marketing videos, but have also raised concerns about the ease with which they could pose as real people in politics and otherwise.

OpenAI says it blocks content containing nudity and that preventing the most harmful uses is a top priority, including child sexual abuse material and sexual deepfakes.

The highly anticipated product received so much backlash upon its release on Monday that OpenAI temporarily halted the creation of new accounts.

“We are currently experiencing high traffic and have temporarily disabled the creation of Sora accounts,” the web page said.

OpenAI first unveiled Sora earlier this year, but said it wanted to engage with artists, policymakers and others before releasing the new tool to the public.

The company, which has been sued by a number of authors and The New York Times for using copyrighted writing to train ChatGPT, has not disclosed what image and video sources were used to train Sora.

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