OpenAI has given around 300 visual artists and filmmakers early access to its new generative AI video tool, Sora, to “gain feedback” on the technology. Tech companies figured it out, but not in the way they expected.
On Tuesday, a group of Sora testers publicly released a version of the tool with a manifesto accusing OpenAI’s program of being exploitative and a “PR and advertising detail.” OpenAI cut off access to Sora three hours after the group made it available online for free, according to a statement from the artists posted on the AI development site Hugging Face.
“We received access to Sora with the promise of being early testers, red teamers, and creative partners. But in return, we received the promise to show the world that Sora is a useful tool for artists. “We believe they are being seduced by ‘art-washing’ to communicate,” says the open letter to “Corporate AI Overlords.”
“Artists are not free R&D,” the letter said. “We are not yours. We are your free bug testers, PR puppets, training data, and validation tokens.”
In response to the outcry, OpenAI announced that it had temporarily suspended access to Sora. “Sora is still in research preview and we are working to balance creativity with robust safety measures for broader applications,” OpenAI principal Nico Felix said in a statement to Variety. said. Hundreds of artists participating in the alpha (testing program) shaped Sora’s development and helped prioritize new features and safety measures. Participation is voluntary and there is no obligation to provide feedback or use the tools. ”
OpenAI’s statement continued, “We are excited to be able to provide free access to these artists and will continue to support them through grants, events, and other programs. We believe that AI is a powerful We believe it can be a creative tool and are committed to making Sora useful and safe.”
The artists’ letter states that through the Sora Early Access Program, “hundreds of artists provide unpaid labor through program bug testing, feedback, and experimental work for a company valued at $150 billion.” It is written. Hundreds of people will donate for free, and a few selected through a competition will screen films produced by Sola. This provides minimal compensation that pales in comparison to the substantial PR and marketing value that OpenAI receives. ”
In October, OpenAI raised another $6.6 billion from investors including Microsoft and Nvidia, giving the company a post-fund valuation of $157 billion. The San Francisco-based company has hired more than 1,000 people since the beginning of the year and has about 1,700 employees.
OpenAI says Sora’s text-to-video model can generate videos up to 60 seconds long. According to the company, Sora is “capable of generating complex scenes with multiple characters, specific types of movement, and precise details of the subject and background.” You will understand not only what things are, but also how those things exist in the physical world. ”
The anti-OpenAI letter posted on Tuesday was signed by 19 artists: Jake Elwes, Memo Akten, CROSSLUCID, Maribeth Rauh, Joel Simon, Jake Hartnell, Bea Ramos, Power Dada, aurèce vettier, acfp, Iannis Bardakos , 204 no-content (Cintia)Agia Pinto and Dimitri de Jonghe), Emmanuel Colette, XU Cheng, Operator, Katie Peyton Hofstadter, Anika Meier, Solimán López.
OpenAI said not all of the artists who signed the letter had access to Sora, and only a small number of them were part of the alpha program.
“We are not opposed to using AI technology as a tool for art (if we were, we probably would not have been invited to this program),” the artists’ letter said. I did. “What we disagree with is how this artist program is being rolled out and how this tool is being prepared prior to general release. We believe that OpenAI is more open and artist-friendly. We are sharing this with the world in the hope that we can go beyond PR and support the arts.”
OpenAI has funded several artists through Tribeca Festival’s Sora Shorts program. The program commissioned five filmmakers to create original AI-enabled short films to be screened at this year’s festival.
The emergence of gen-AI video platforms that can generate realistic-looking images has alarmed Hollywood creators, including Tyler Perry. Citing Mr. Sola in particular, Mr. Perry announced earlier this year that he was canceling an $800 million expansion plan for his Atlanta studio. “I’ve been watching AI closely,” Perry said. He said the studio’s expansion is “on hold now and indefinitely because of what Sora and I are looking at.”
Separately, this fall, Meta announced Movie Gen, a new generative AI tool that can create video clips up to 16 seconds long (with synchronized AI-generated audio) based on text prompts. It’s not available to the public, but the company plans to start rolling it out on Instagram and Facebook in 2025. As part of a pilot program to gather feedback, Meta is working with creators including Jason Blum’s horror studio Blumhouse, Casey Affleck and Aneesh Chaganty. The Spurlock sisters experiment with movie generation
(Pictured above: An image from a video generated by Sora, which OpenAI says is based on the following prompt: “A stylish woman walks through a Tokyo street filled with warmly glowing neon and animated city signs. She is wearing a black leather jacket and a long red dress. She is wearing black boots and carrying a black handbag. She is walking confidently and casually. pedestrians create colorful light reflections.
