Unlike the ChatGPT chatbot and DALL-E image generation platform, OpenAI’s Sora text-to-video tool has not been publicly available until now. However, OpenAI recently announced that it had given access to Sora to “visual artists, designers, creative directors, and cinematographers,” and shared the results of their work in a “first impressions” blog post.
While all the videos, which range from 20 seconds to a minute and a half in length, are visually stunning, most of them can be described as abstract. A 20-second film by OpenAI artist-in-residence Alex Reben presents what could very well be one of his sculptures (or at least a concept for one), while a video by creative director Josephine Miller shows models “dressed” in stained glass clothing.
Multimedia production company Shy Kids presented the short film Air Head about a man who has a yellow balloon filled with hot air instead of his head. The ability of the tool to convincingly combine a balloon with what looks like a human body and a realistic environment is impressive. As Shy Kids’ representative Walter Woodman noted: “As great as Sora is at creating things that seem real, we’re just as fascinated by her ability to create things that are completely surreal.” And yes, it is an interesting, funny and extremely surreal short film.
Digital artist Don Allen Stevenson III has presented a whimsical work that looks like a twisted National Geographic nature film, depicting never-before-seen combinations of animals. In the video, you can see “giraffe flamingos”, “black crows” or flying pigs.
OpenAI and the artists did not disclose the prompts used to create the video, nor did they talk about the effort it took to get from the idea to the final video. So it remains to be seen if they all just typed a paragraph describing the scene, style and level of reality and hit enter, or if it was an iterative process that led them to the balloon sitting perfectly on the man’s shoulders and the armadillo rabbit appearing not whimsical, but even charming.
No wonder OpenAI invited creatives to test Sora. It is their art, film and animation activities that are most at risk due to Sora’s impressive capabilities. Most of them are convinced that this is a tool that will help them create ready-made commercial products faster. “Being able to quickly create concepts at such a high level of quality not only challenges my creative process but also helps me grow in storytelling,” shared Josephine Miller. “It allows me to realize my imagination with fewer technical limitations.”
Read also:
- OpenAI will make Sora’s AI video generator publicly available later this year
- Elon Musk is now dragging OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman to court