If AI in Hollywood wasn’t enough for you, you might be interested in a social media site that only features AI-generated content. Well, OpenAI officially released the successor to last year’s Sora, the creatively named Sora 2, earlier this week. Along with this AI model, the company also launched a linked social app also called Sora, which is meant to be a direct competitor to TikTok.
Users of the app can also upload their own likeness and voice in order to create AI-generated videos of themselves. These videos can then be shared on the platform with a TikTok-like algorithm.
In an official blog post, OpenAI said that “prior video models are overoptimistic—they will morph objects and deform reality to successfully execute upon a text prompt.” The Sora 2, on the other hand, is better at obeying the laws of physics, making the output more realistic. You can see how realistic things can get with the official two-minute-long announcement video above.
As mentioned before, the Sora app allows users to upload themselves in these videos with what OpenAI calls “cameos”. In order to do this, users will have to submit a one-time audio and video recording to verify their identity and record their appearance.
TechCrunch noted that, once this step is complete, “this feature also allows users to share their ‘cameos’ with their friends, allowing them to give other users permission to include their likeness in videos that they generate, including videos of multiple people together.” OpenAI believes that the “cameos” feature is the best way to experience the capabilities of Sora 2.
As for feed curation, OpenAI will look into a user’s Sora activity, their location (attained via their IP address), previous post engagement, and ChatGPT conversation history, though this can be disabled in its entirety. In addition to that, the app will ship with parental controls powered by ChatGPT, giving parents the ability to override infinite scroll limits, disable personalised algorithms, and manage who can directly message their child.
At the time of writing, the Sora is only available in the US and Canada and is invite-only, but OpenAI states that it plans to swiftly expand the app to other countries. Furthermore, the app is only available to iOS users, making Android users wait for a wider rollout.
People are already being fooled by AI as is. Needless to say, a social media platform built on hyper-realistic recreations of people with audio can be extremely dangerous, as it can easily be abused. OpenAI states it is increasing its teams of human moderators to quickly review videos as they arise.
The company also allows users to revoke access to their likeness at any time, but a user may still be harmed by misleading content created by someone they know. Non-consensual AI-generated videos have been an international concern for some time, and the creation of this app might have only escalated the problem.
(Source: OpenAI, TechCrunch, CNN)
