Just over a week ago, OpenAI launched its latest text-to-video generating app, a TikTok-like experience dubbed Sora 2 that lets users churn out a tidal wave of AI slop.
It didn’t take long for users to use the app to generate videos of copyrighted and widely-known characters, from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman barbecuing a Pikachu and full episodes of “South Park” to SpongeBob SquarePants cooking up blue meth crystals in the style of AMC’s iconic “Breaking Bad” TV series.
The hype was so immense that Sora rocketed to the top of Apple’s App Store rankings in a matter of just two days. After all, who wouldn’t want to see Super Mario involved in a high-speed police pursuit?
But it’s quickly turned into a rocky road. In the days leading up to the launch, the Wall Street Journal reported that rightsholders would have to “opt out” of having their copyrighted material shown in the app — only for OpenAI to reverse course soon after the launch.
“We will give rightsholders more granular control over generation of characters, similar to the opt-in model for likeness but with additional controls,” Altman wrote in an update on his blog last week.
The cat was already out of the bag, though, sparking what’s likely to be immense legal drama for OpenAI. On Monday, the Motion Picture Association, a US trade association that represents major film studios, released a scorching statement urging OpenAI to “take immediate and decisive action” to stop the app from infringing on copyrighted media.
Meanwhile, OpenAI appears to have come down hard on what kind of text prompts can be turned into AI slop on Sora, implementing sweeping new guardrails presumably meant to appease furious rightsholders and protect their intellectual property.
As a result, power users experienced major whiplash that’s tarnishing the launch’s image even among fans. It’s a lose-lose moment for OpenAI’s flashy new app — either aggravate rightsholders by allowing mass copyright infringement, or turn it into yet another mind-numbing screensaver-generating experience like Meta’s widely mocked Vibes.
“It’s official, Sora 2 is completely boring and useless with these copyright restrictions. Some videos should be considered fair use,” one Reddit user lamented.
Others accused OpenAI of abusing copyright to hype up its new app.
“This is just classic OpenAI at this point,” another user wrote. “They do this s*** all the time. Let people have fun for a day or two and then just start censoring like crazy.”
The app now has a measly 2.9-star rating on the App Store, indicative of growing disillusionment and frustration with censorship.
Others continue to find ways around OpenAI’s guardrails, generating videos from Super Mario and Wario collaborating to save Princess Peach to Courage the Cowardly Dog appearing in Ring doorbell footage.
It’s an eerily familiar game of cat and mouse, reminiscent of the earlier days of ChatGPT.
“We want to apply the same standard towards everyone, and let rightsholders decide how to proceed,” Altman wrote in his blog. “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.”
How OpenAI’s eyebrow-raising ask-for-forgiveness-later approach to copyright will play out in the long term remains to be seen. For one, the company may already be in hot water, as major Hollywood studios have already started suing over less.
Case in point, Warner Bros. Discovery sued AI image generator Midjourney for infringement last month, joining Disney and NBCU.
Anthropic has also had to pay $1.5 billion as part of a copyright infringement settlement after getting caught training its large language models on copious amounts of pirated material.
In an apparent effort to save face, Altman claimed this week that many copyright holders are actually begging to have their characters appear on Sora, instead of complaining about the trend.
“In the case of Sora, we’ve heard from a lot of concerned rightsholders and also a lot of rightsholders who are like ‘My concern is you won’t put my character in enough,’” he told the a16z podcast earlier this week.
“So I can completely see a world where subject to the decisions that a rightsholder has, they get more upset with us for not generating their character often enough than too much,” he added.
Whether most rightsholders would agree with that sentiment remains to be seen. It’s been a chaotic week and a half — and signs point towards OpenAI trying to roll with the punches instead of preparing a coherent plan ahead of time.
More on Sora 2: Sam Altman Says Copyright Holders Are Begging for Their Characters to Be Included in Sora