OpenAI’s creation, Sora, was designed to be a dazzling glimpse into the future of AI-generated video. Instead, it’s spent the past week unleashing a chaotic parade of Nazi SpongeBobs, rogue Pikachus, and philosophising Ricks and Mortys, and forcing OpenAI to scramble for damage control.
Launched just last week, the TikTok-style app lets users create 10-second AI-generated videos complete with sound, from anything your imagination (or prompt) can conjure. Users can even star in their own clips via “cameos,” AI-generated versions of themselves, or those who’ve consented to share their likeness. The result? A viral explosion that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman admits he hadn’t quite anticipated.
“I think the theory of what it was going to feel like to people, and then actually seeing the thing, people had different responses,” Altman said, reflecting on the uproar. “It felt more different to images than people expected.”
OpenAI is legal trouble
Initially, OpenAI rolled out Sora with an opt-out system for copyright holders, meaning that if studios and creators didn’t want their characters wandering into Sora’s fever dreams, they had to say so explicitly. But after a flood of absurd and often troubling clips went viral, Altman announced a U-turn. The company would “let rightsholders decide how to proceed,” giving them more control over how their content and likenesses appear, Altman wrote in a blogpost.
Altman insists that the change came from “talking to stakeholders,” not panic. “Many rightsholders are excited,” he said, “but they want a lot more controls.” He also confessed that Sora’s viral surge caught the company off guard. “We thought we could slow down the ramp; that didn’t happen.”
One of those controls is now a more nuanced approach to cameos. Altman said he had expected people to either go fully public with their AI likenesses or avoid it altogether, but reality proved far messier. “A lot of people changed their minds,” he admitted, noting that users are comfortable with digital clones of themselves, so long as those clones don’t “say offensive things or things they find deeply problematic.”
Bill Peebles, OpenAI’s head of Sora, added that users can now set specific boundaries through text instructions like: “Don’t put me in political videos” or “Don’t let me say this word.” According to Peebles, the company has “heard from lots of folks who want to make their cameos available to everyone but retain control over how they’re used.”
Still, the app’s runaway popularity has raised bigger questions about misinformation. Sora watermarks its videos, but Altman conceded during a Q&A that people are already “finding ways to remove it.” Tutorials showing how to erase the watermark have already flooded social media, fuelling fears that ultra-realistic deepfakes could spread unchecked.
OpenAI stands tall
Despite the backlash, OpenAI appears to be doubling down. During DevDay, Altman announced that the company is releasing Sora 2 through its API, giving developers access to the same model, watermark-free. When pressed about safeguards, he offered no concrete answer.
Altman framed the turbulence as a teachable moment. “Not for much longer will we have the only good video model out there,” he said. “There’s going to be a ton of videos with none of our safeguards, and that’s fine, that’s the way the world works.” He added that this brief window should be used “to get society to really understand we can generate almost indistinguishable video now, and you’ve got to be ready for that.”
It’s a bold stance, one critics say echoes Silicon Valley’s notorious “move fast and break things” ethos. Altman denies that charge. “Not at all,” he said. “People say we’re too restrictive, they call it censorship. We’re starting conservatively and will find ways to allow more over time.”
For now, Sora remains the hottest free app on Apple’s App Store, outpacing even ChatGPT’s meteoric debut. OpenAI president Greg Brockman quipped that the main lesson from the chaos was simple: “We’re going to need more compute.”
OpenAI’s infrastructure ambitions are growing just as fast. With its Stargate project, a massive, multibillion-dollar data centre initiative backed by SoftBank and Oracle, the company hopes to secure the computing power needed to fuel this new era of AI video.
Altman, ever the optimist, insists the turbulence is worth it. “We’ve got to have this sort of technological and societal co-evolution,” he said. “There are clearly going to be challenges for society contending with this quality but the only way to prepare is to experience it.”
