Sora 2 Turned Your Timeline Into an Alternate Universe This Weekend

This weekend, some people’s timelines looked like alternate universes. 2Pac and Biggie, two of hip-hop’s most mythologized figures, were suddenly back from the dead, shit-talking each other before a wrestling match. Michael Jackson, who died in 2009, was somehow performing stand-up comedy. And SpongeBob SquarePants and Rick and Morty were seen in strange clips that no network or studio ever could have signed off on.

The source of all of this is Sora 2, OpenAI’s latest text-to-video model, which launched last week. The invite-only tool generates hyperrealistic videos from simple prompts and now allows users to insert themselves into deepfake-style content.

The spread of the AI-generated videos is highlighting a glaring copyright-infringing content issue. Sora initially took a loose approach, requiring studios, creators, and rightsholders to “opt out” of having their material used in app rather than requiring explicit permission to use it.

According to The Guardian, rightsholders can fill out a “copyright dispute form" to get their material removed, but “individual artists or studios cannot have a blanket opt-out.”

“We’ll work with rights holders to block characters from Sora at their request and respond to takedown requests," Varun Shetty, OpenAI’s head of media partnerships, told the outlet.

@theshmeatypetey4
Replying to @S.D.Morningstar54 part 2, 2pac got some help #2pac #biggiesmalls #wwe #ai #wwf
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On Saturday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman acknowledged the conversation in a blog post. He said Sora will soon switch to an opt-in model, giving rights holders “more granular control over generation of characters.”

"We are hearing from a lot of rights holders who are very excited for this new kind of "interactive fan fiction" and think this new kind of engagement will accrue a lot of value to them, but want the ability to specify how their characters can be used (including not at all)," he wrote. “We assume different people will try very different approaches and will figure out what works for them. But we want to apply the same standard towards everyone, and let rights holders decide how to proceed (our aim of course is to make it so compelling that many people want to). There may be some edge cases of generations that get through that shouldn't, and getting our stack to work well will take some iteration.”

Altman likened this process to the early days of ChatGPT.

“We will make some good decisions and some missteps, but we will take feedback and try to fix the missteps very quickly,” he wrote.