Elon Musk's OpenAI Launches AI-Video Generator 'Sora', Now Available To The Public (We Still Have a Long Way to Go)

At least it was open to the public. I tried to sign up for an account myself, but was hit with an "Account creation currently unavailable" error message. Too much traffic I imagine. Too many people eager to see if Sora will let them create AI-sex tapes of their favorite musical artist. Fingers crossed the answer to that is still no for any text-to-video AI software as mainstream as Sora. But guaranteed somebody at OpenAI has access to the unfiltered technology. And that man (or woman) is cooking up some of the weirdest AI-porn imaginable. If you don't think Elon Musk has Sora-X downloaded on his home computer, then I've got a bridge to sell you.

Ever since we first started seeing hyper-realistic AI photos circulate the internet, my takeaway has always been the same. The photos and videos look so incredibly real on so many levels. The technology seems to be capable of doing all difficult seeming stuff. But the things that should be easy... like putting 5 fingers on a hand, or spelling a basic word. It just can't quite figure it out. It never quite puts the necessary finishing touches on a video to make it passable for real life. 

From the videos I've seen today, Sora looks very hit or miss. Especially when it comes to making people. It can only handle so much movement before an arm does something an arm shouldn't be able to do, or a face briefly transforms into Sloth from the Goonies. It still struggles when it comes to humans touching, or humans having any sort of physical interaction. 

And for the love of God, do not ask Sora to make your creation eat soup. At least not the European way.

But Sora seems to have a much better grip on animals and nature. For every unsettling attempt at creating a human, there's one "dog on surfboard", or "cat on Christmas" to make up for it.

One of the coolest features to me, if Sora is ever able to nail it down, is that you can upload a personal photograph and have AI bring it to life. However, this Marques Brownlee gentleman tried it with a picture of him and kangaroo, and another picture of him playing ultimate frisbee. The results were troubling.

So there's still plenty of kinks to work out there. But if you need an overhead drone shot of some nature… Or a slow moving pan over a cloudy New York City. Sora's got you covered. 

I feel like we still have a long ways to go until the average person can start producing AI videos that can pass for real life in a consequential way. In a way that can cause serious problems for people. When we get to that point I'll be officially scared. I'm not sure if it will happen in my lifetime, but someday they'll get there. Someday we'll see a disturbing video of Diddy and Jay-Z circulate the internet, they'll insist it's AI, and nobody will know who to believe. It'll be just awful. I'm still not sure what the actual benefits of this are other than AI videos being "kind of cool". But regardless, we seem intent on making the technology as good as possible. For whatever reason that may be.