OpenAI Backtracks on Copyright Policy for Sora 2 After Wild Videos Appear
Social media has been awash with wild, AI-generated videos the past few days thanks to OpenAI’s newly-released Sora 2, which has stormed to the top of the App Store despite being invite only.
As well as generating AI videos that come with sound, Sora 2 is essentially its own social media platform. Users have been creating videos of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman stealing content from Hayao Miyazaki of Studio Ghibli fame.
But since it launched, users have also been making videos of recognizable figures like SpongeBob Squarepants, Pokémon characters, and members of The Simpsons engaged in illegal activities or at least doing something their IP owners would not approve of. There have also been outrageous, realistic videos of celebrities like Michael Jackson and Stephen Hawking.
Altman addressed this issue in a blog post over the weekend, saying that Sora 2 will give rightsholders “more granular control over generation of characters.”
“We are hearing from a lot of rightsholders who are very excited for this new kind of ‘interactive fan fiction’ and think this new kind of engagement will accrue a lot of value to them,” Altman writes. “But want the ability to specify how their characters can be used (including not at all).”
When Sora was first announced, it was reported by The Wall Street Journal that OpenAI informed Hollywood studios that, unless they explicitly opted out, their copyrighted content may appear in Sora output. But now OpenAI is switching that to opt-in while Altman tries to appease rightsholders by vaguely offering a revenue-sharing scheme.
“We are going to have to somehow make money for video generation. People are generating much more than we expected per user, and a lot of videos are being generated for very small audiences,” Altman says.
“We are going to try sharing some of this revenue with rightsholders who want their characters generated by users. The exact model will take some trial and error to figure out, but we plan to start very soon.”
Despite what Altman says about rightsholders being “very excited” about their beloved characters appearing in Sora’s AI videos, there will be discontent in some boardrooms. Warner Bros. Discovery, Disney, and NBC Universal have all sued AI image generator Midjourney in recent months for exactly this type of output.
Warner Bros. Discovery accuses Midjourney of allowing its subscribers to “pick iconic copyrighted characters” which are then used for “infringing images and videos, and unauthorized derivatives, with every imaginable scene featuring those characters.” That sounds very similar to what Sora users have been up to this past weekend.
Image credits: Header photo licensed via Depositphotos.
