OpenAI Unveils Text-to-Video Model Called Sora

OpenAI, the creator behind artificial intelligence-powered chatbot ChatGPT, is launching Sora, a text-to-video model.

Sora can create videos that are up to one minute long based on text prompts from users, OpenAI said in a Thursday (Feb. 15) blog post.

“We’re teaching AI to understand and simulate the physical world in motion, with the goal of training models that help people solve problems that require real-world interaction,” OpenAI said in the post.

“Sora is able to generate complex scenes with multiple characters, specific types of motion, and accurate details of the subject and background,” OpenAI added in the post. “The model understands not only what the user has asked for in the prompt, but also how those things exist in the physical world.”

Additionally, the generative AI model can create a video based on a single image, as well as extend an existing video or fill in missing frames, according to the post.

OpenAI noted in the post that Sora is imperfect and may have trouble synthesizing the physics of a complicated scene or comprehending cause and effect.

“For example, a person might take a bite out of a cookie, but afterward, the cookie may not have a bite mark,” the post said.

The AI firm is also considering safety, per the post.

“We are working with red teamers — domain experts in areas like misinformation, hateful content and bias — who will be adversarially testing the model,” the post said. “We’re also building tools to help detect misleading content such as a detection classifier that can tell when a video was generated by Sora. We plan to include C2PA metadata in the future if we deploy the model in an OpenAI product.”

The introduction of Sora comes two days after OpenAI rolled out a new memory feature for ChatGPT, its best-known product.

OpenAI announced Tuesday (Feb. 13) new trials allowing ChatGPT to remember details from users’ previous conversations.

Users can ask the generative AI chatbot to retain specific information from one exchange to the next. ChatGPT will also be able to automatically determine what information from a user’s conversations should be remembered.

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