OpenAI's Sora 2 demo included a Viking-ish visual made with the prompt "Vikings Go To War - North Sea Launch." OpenAI Share on Facebook Share on X Share to Flipboard Send an Email Show additional share options Share on LinkedIn Share on Pinterest Share on Reddit Share on Tumblr Share on Whats App Print the Article Post a Comment On Tuesday, OpenAI dropped Sora 2, the newest iteration of its 2024-launched video-generation tool. Figure skaters with cats on their heads, dog astronauts gobbling tennis balls, unusually agile horseback riders standing astride multiple animals - these were some of the snippets seen in its short video presentation. Sure, the model still struggles with dialogue - notice that the scenes feature mostly voiceover when there are words at all. And slow down the videos to individual frames and you'll see plenty of hallucinations. But OpenAI did enough shiny things Tuesday to make users take notice. The company will release - first by invite, and then presumably commercially - a tool that will let users prompt these videos into existence and share on their social feeds. Now instead of dunking on people with off the rack memes or shooting a quick video to troll our friends we'll just prompt them into existence. Related Stories Business Did Kimmel Cancellations Hit Disney+? There Might Be an Impact, But Don't Bet on Seeing It Movies New 'Simpsons' Movie Set for 2027 Release "Sora 2 can do things that are exceptionally difficult - and in some instances outright impossible - for prior video generation models: Olympic gymnastics routines, backflips on a paddleboard that accurately model the dynamics of buoyancy and rigidity, and triple axels while a cat holds on for dear life, "the company said in a statement. So what will this mean for our content landscape? For Hollywood producers? For all of us entertainment consumers? The news also comes amid reports that the company will launch a Sora-powered social app and that Hollywood studios will need to opt out - read: request takedowns - of any video it finds distastefully close to its own protected IP. Taken together, these news developments seem to be hinting at a world of video we've been waiting on for a while now. The AI-ification of our TikTok feed is upon us. The Hollywood Reporter's senior tech editor Steven Zeitchik and senior features editor Julian Sancton sat down to make sense of what they saw. ** Julian Sancton: So how do you read today's announcement? Does OpenAI, which has been having not-so-open talks with Hollywood about encouraging the use of their tools in traditional filmmaking, now give up that approach in favor of allowing the public to make 10-second clips? Or is this just a way to make some cash until the technology to make longer clips becomes viable? Steven Zeitchik: The $64,000 dollar question. Or I guess $500 billion question, given OpenAI's valuation: Are they trying to be AI TikTok or do they still have hope of being next-gen Pixar? Of course, maybe we're being too old-line in our thinking. Maybe there won't be a next-gen Pixar - maybe that top down, elite producers-mass consumers binary, if OpenAI has its way, is a model of the past. Maybe what they're really after is a world where studios are just sort of IP gatekeepers and we're all creating within it. JS: It certainly seems like being AI TikTok is cheaper and more profitable! At least for OpenAI. And it's a lot more attainable now. SZ: And so where does all this leave high-end Hollywood-type video? There are only so many hours in the day, and if these tools catch on we'll be spending a lot more of them watching or creating our own slop-y videos instead of the professional kind. Studios and even influencers will feel the squeeze. JS: I would be very surprised if Hollywood allows this "opt-out" model to stand unchallenged. The studios, as you've noted before, would much prefer to control the memeification of their IP. SZ: Right, doesn't this all work its way toward a deal? Like right now studios are fighting and OpenAI argues fair use and it's very line-in-the-sand. But ultimately it seems to me it's all about setting terms for negotiation. Sora 2 or Google Veo or whatever tool we use to create these videos will come with branded characters, and studios will get a cut of that. They'll move more from a production model to a rights-management model. Which has kind of been happening anyway. JS: But do you think studios will really go for that? I do doubt that studios would be happy making movies without having to deal with actors and writers and crews. SZ: You think they'd prefer to deal with actors and crews? JS: I think for all their cutthroat tactics and greed, the execs did not necessarily get in this business just to make money. Scratch most of them and you'll find a failed artist. SZ: The Matt Remick factor. I guess it comes down to how many of them there are - the quiet idealists in the C-suite. You think there are many. You're much more of an optimist than I am.