Adrian JohnsonTLDR:
- San Francisco-based start-up OpenAI has unveiled Sora, an artificial intelligence (AI) technology that generates highly realistic videos in minutes.
- Sora creates videos that appear to be lifted from Hollywood movies, with examples including woolly mammoths in a snowy meadow, a melting candle, and a Tokyo street scene.
- OpenAI is among several companies, including Google and Meta, racing to improve instant video generation technology.
- The technology has the potential to benefit filmmakers by speeding up their work, but it also poses risks of creating online disinformation.
San Francisco start-up OpenAI has introduced a new AI technology called Sora, which generates highly convincing videos in a matter of minutes. The technology has the potential to revolutionize video creation, with examples including short videos of woolly mammoths in a snowy meadow, a melting candle, and a Tokyo street scene that look as if they were lifted from a Hollywood movie.
OpenAI, known for its successful projects such as the ChatGPT chatbot and the still-image generator DALL-E, is among several companies competing to improve instant video generation. Start-ups like Runway AI and tech giants including Google and Meta (Facebook and Instagram’s owner) are also investing in this field.
This technology has the potential to benefit filmmakers, allowing them to speed up their work and create visually stunning videos quickly. However, it also carries the risk of making it easy to create and disseminate online disinformation, blurring the line between what is real and what is not on the internet.
