If you want to know why Tyler Perry put an $800m (£635m) expansion of his studio complex on hold, type “two people in a living room in the mountains” into OpenAI’s video generation tool.
The result from artificial intelligence-powered Sora, which was released in the UK and Europe on Friday, indicates why the US TV and film mogul paused his plans.
Perry said last year after seeing previews of Sora that if he wanted to produce that mountain shot, he may not need to build sets on location or on his lot. “I can sit in an office and do this with a computer, which is shocking to me,” he said.
The result from a simple text prompt is only five seconds long – you can go to up to 20 seconds and also stitch together much longer videos from the tool – and the “actors” display telltale problems with their hands (a common problem with AI tools). But the mountain backdrop and the cosy interiors are convincing, and it only took 45 seconds to make after the text prompt was entered. The technology will also improve.
In order to access Sora users need to have a paid-for package with ChatGPT, but it is an indication of where video-generating technology is heading in the rapidly evolving AI market. It also underlines why the row over copyright has reached red-hot levels on both sides of the Atlantic.
It is obvious that video generation tools such as Sora, Kling and Runway have the potential to transform the film, TV and advertising industries. One of the UK digital artists who has experimented with the tool, Josephine Miller, told the Guardian it has expanded opportunities for “younger creatives” and she is already using it to pitch advertising concepts to brands.
OpenAI says creatives and studios in locations where Sora is already available, such as in the US, have been using it to produce film and advertising concepts and pitches.
David Jones, the chief executive of Brandtech Group, an advertising startup using generative AI to create marketing campaigns, says there is going to be “tectonic disruption” of the advertising and marketing industries due to tools such as Sora.
Jones says this is a “Kodak moment” for his industry, referring to the analogue camera film company that succumbed to the digital revolution.
Big advertisers are already embracing AI-made video. Coca-Cola produced an entirely AI-generated Christmas ad last year and the technology’s implications were outlined in a pointed tweet from Alex Hirsch, the creator of the Disney-animated series Gravity Falls.
“FUN FACT: @CocaCola is ‘red’ because it’s made from the blood of out-of-work artists!” he wrote.
The problem of artists losing out to AI has become a key battleground in development of the technology on multiple levels, not least with regard to copyright. AI systems such as Sora and ChatGPT are powered by models that are trained on vast amounts of data culled from the internet. ChatGPT, which was also developed by OpenAI, is the subject of lawsuits claiming the use of artists’ work without permission is a breach of copyright.
The row deepened in the UK this week over government plans to allow AI firms to use copyrighted work without permission. The creative sector hit back with the release of a silent protest album by 1,000 musicians and an open letter from leading creative figures including Dua Lipa, Sir Tom Stoppard and Sir Paul McCartney warning that the government was on the verge of agreeing a “wholesale giveaway of rights and income from the UK creative sectors to big tech”.
Sora and its peers are not at the forefront of that row, but they clearly represent a competitive threat to artists who want recompense if their work has been used to create these tools – and their content. YouTube’s chief executive warned last year that it would be a breach of the platform’s terms of service if OpenAI had used YouTube content to train Sora’s model. Reports have already pointed to Sora’s apparent familiarity with gaming content.
Beeban Kidron, an award-winning film-maker and crossbench peer who has spoken out against the UK government’s plans, has told the Guardian that Sora’s arrival adds “another layer of urgency” to the debate.
Tyler Perry is not the only creative who is concerned.