Artists Take Sora for a Test Drive While OpenAI Courts Hollywood for Text-to-Video

OpenAI to further extend its cultural influence

OpenAI made Sora available to several artists and creative agencies to see what they could do with the new text-to-video AI model. There are several impressive examples. However, none compare with “Air Head” by shy kids, a multimedia production company. The composition and storytelling are impressive. It also highlights how text-to-video is poised to become its own artistic medium.

Walter Woodman, a shy kids principal who directed Air Head, remarked about Sora:

As great as Sora is at generating things that appear real, what excites us is its ability to make things that are totally surreal. A new era of abstract expressionism.

The abstract expressionism comes through in the examples provided by OpenAI from its earliest users. Studios, creative agencies, artists, and musicians were tapped by OpenAI to experiment with the text-to-video model released last month. Their creations are both impressive and definitely lean toward abstraction. OpenAI commented in a blog post that debuted several Sora-enabled creations alongside Air Head.

Since we introduced Sora to the world last month, we’ve been working with visual artists, designers, creative directors and filmmakers to learn how Sora might aid in their creative process. While we have many improvements to make to Sora, we're already getting a glimpse of how the model can help creatives bring ideas to reality.

It is unclear how much of these creations were exclusively attributed to Sora or a single prompt in Sora. It clearly appears as if several were spliced together and potentially other media added in the creative process. That is not a bad thing, and it reinforces that Sora may be a first-stop or finishing touch for creative works as opposed to a single prompt resulting in a finished product. Don Allen Stevenson, an AR/XR artist, commented:

For a long time I've been making augmented reality hybrid creatures that I think would be fun combinations in my head. Now I have a much easier way of prototyping the ideas before I fully build out the 3-D characters to place in spatial computers…It’s not bound by traditional laws of physics or conventions of thought. …I feel like this allows me to focus more of my time and energy in the right places… and the emotional impact that I would like my characters to have.

OpenAI Goes to Hollywood

Innovations such as ChatGPT were a key sticking point in the recent Hollywood screenwriters’ strike. Professional writers were concerned that studios would outsource some or all of their work to new generative AI-based applications. Despite those concerns, Bloomberg reported that OpenAI was in Hollywood this week promoting the use of Sora in film and television development.

The artificial intelligence startup has scheduled meetings in Los Angeles next week with Hollywood studios, media executives and talent agencies to form partnerships in the entertainment industry and encourage filmmakers to integrate its new AI video generator into their work, according to people familiar with the matter.

It is unclear whether visual effects (VFX) professionals will view the technology in the same way as the screenwriters’ union. However, it seems likely there will be similar concerns. If you can use Sora to save time in prototyping or creating digital artifacts, that is work that would have previously been completed by a VFX artist.

Worker displacement is already taking place in the technology industry. Tech giants have included software developers in their layoffs over the past year, a group that was often spared in previous cost-cutting cycles. A key reason is that tools like GitHub Copilot and other AI-enabled pair programmers have streamlined some types of software development, or there is an expectation that they will. Hollywood, despite the strikes, is facing this same disruption. Sora simply shifts this effect from words to video.

At the same time, AI assistance with writing, image, and video creation will likely become commonplace across industries. In our experience at Synthedia, creatives are the most effective at using these tools to create innovations and improve productivity. It is not a matter of “if” tools like Sora will be used in Hollywood. It is only a matter of how it will be applied.

I recommend you check out a few videos highlighted in OpenAI’s blog post. They are impressive and will give you a sense of how much progress has been made with the technology.

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