What To Expect From Sora, OpenAI’s New AI Video Model

We all knew this was going to happen sooner rather than later. OpenAI has brought us a tool capable of turning text into beautiful, realistic videos. Once again, the leading company in the AI world has knocked it out of the park, surpassing our wildest expectations. Sora, OpenAI's newest AI text-to-video tool, comes with a wide range of possibilities for content creation.?

Videos have been an extremely effective tool for marketing, teaching, and entertaining purposes for a while. Think of tutorials, video games, ads, SEO strategies, movies, series, etc. Videos are remarkably powerful and engaging! As the latest AI marvel, Sora allows us to harness the potential of videos with simple and short commands. But why is Sora a complete game-changer? Let's dive deeper!

What is Sora AI?

The word "Sora" comes from a Japanese word representing things beyond our normal perception. It directly translates to "sky" or "heaven." Like Dall-E, Sora is a diffusion model and video generator that uses complex Machine Learning (ML) algorithms to generate brand-new content. In this case, the tool focuses on high-quality videos with detailed scenes. Like tools like ChatGPT or Midjourney, users rely on prompt writing to specify all the desired details for their final videos.

But how do this translation and meaning relate to the world of Artificial Intelligence? Meet Sora AI! On Thursday, February 15th, OpenAI launched its new text-to-video platform, which relies on Generative AI taking written commands and recasting them as videos up to 60 seconds.

Does it sound too good to be true? Well, it's perhaps even better than you think. Prompt writing is not the only way to make astonishing videos: Sora also lets users pass images as input to bring them to life in video format! Like GPT-4, it deeply understands the language and context it uses to create high-quality videos. Thus, there's impressive coherence between the elements Sora uses in its scenes. Even though it's not flawless, its consistency is jaw-dropping.

How Does Sora Work?

OpenAI built Sora based on thorough research from GPT and DALLE. This text-to-video AI model uses the famous Transformer architecture to achieve world-class performance, leading the company to define it as a diffusion transformer tool. Since Sora uses many small units to create videos, it requires a lot of computing power—that might explain Sam Altman's asking the US Government for $7 trillion to back his AI venture!?

Sora creates videos by gradually turning random static noise into beautiful image layers. Apart from using text prompts or static images, you can also pass videos you want Sora to extend (forward or backward), leading to the impressive fact that Sora's videos can last up to 60 seconds. Descriptive prompts can include animated scenes, art style, vivid colors, 3D animations, specific aspects of people, and other complex scenes. It's also perfect for photorealistic videos with a cinematic style.?

What is the Power of OpenAI's Sora?

Sora's demonstration videos are nothing short of supernatural, with examples ranging from a stylish woman walking down the streets of Tokyo to pirate ships fighting in a cup of coffee. These results can lead to the question of how much time and effort it takes to make the videos OpenAI used to show the real-life applications of its latest product. Yet, Sam Altman was very active on his X/Twitter account, taking requests from the public. The requested videos were very complex. One of them was a hamster riding a half-dragon, half-duck creature, and Sam came back with perfect creations from Sora.

As of the moment of writing this article, the Sora landing page states that "the model may confuse spatial details of a prompt, for example, mixing up left and right, and may struggle with precise descriptions of events that take place over time, like following a specific camera trajectory." Yet, we've seen how it surpasses similar tools like Stable Video Diffusion in every aspect, including realism, duration, coherence, and transitioning. Sora's transitions are so mind-blowing that you can merge scenery from multiple videos into a grid. The best part is that it can do that with unrelated subjects and imaginative scenes!?

What's really breathtaking is that this is just the tip of the iceberg.

OpenAI's Risks and Controversy with Sora

It isn't hard to see how a video generation tool that can make extremely realistic scenes can be used with ill intentions. Without any ethical ground base, people could use tools like Sora maliciously in sectors like politics, the news, economics, etc. Nonetheless, OpenAI mentioned that Sora would prevent "extreme violence, sexual content, hateful imagery, and celebrity likeness." They also said they were working on a detection classifier so everyone could know if they were watching Sora-generated videos.?

Currently, only a selected group of creative professionals has access to Sora. Its website states that OpenAI's team is granting access to a reduced group of visual artists, designers, and filmmakers to assess critical areas for harm or risks. In terms of safety, luckily, OpenAI's team can borrow some of the methods they have already developed for Dall-E. It will use the C2PA standard to help users verify the content's origin, which is key since we can expect the media and social platforms to be full of AI-generated videos in no time.?

Conclusion

There's no doubt that Sora is the most powerful video generation model ever created. OpenAI has revolutionized the digital world one more time! We've seen an enormous step regarding AI-generated content. As mentioned, it still makes some occasional mistakes that reveal the content was made with AI. Yet, Sora's overall capabilities are unreal. Generative video models are a great addition to most fields, including Software and Product Development. Hence, as you should be, we're excited about the official release of Sora to the public. We hope it can help us create products with seamless User Experiences (UX) and drive more growth in the digital world.

This article was written by Manuel A. on February 22nd, 2024. We cannot wait to see what the future of OpenAI's Sora has for us! If you're looking to disrupt the future with cutting-edge tech, you should get in touch with us!