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OpenAI is at war with its own Sora video testers after a brief public leak

    “We are not against the use of AI technology as a tool for art (if we were, we probably wouldn't have been invited to this program),” PR Puppets writes. “What we disagree with is how this artist program has been rolled out and how the tool is developing ahead of a potential public release. We're sharing this with the world in hopes that OpenAI will become more open and artist-friendly. and supports the arts beyond PR stunts.”

    An excerpt from the open letter from PR Puppets, as published on Hugging Face on Tuesday.


    Credit: PR Dolls/HuggingFace

    In a statement to Ars Technica, an OpenAI spokesperson noted that “Sora is still in the research phase and we are working to balance creativity and robust security measures for broader use. Hundreds of artists in our alpha have shaped Sora's development and are helping to prioritize new features and safeguards. Participation is voluntary, with no obligation to provide feedback or use the tool.”

    Throughout the day on Tuesday, PR Puppets updated its open letter with signatures from 16 people and groups listed as “sora-alpha artists.” But a source with knowledge of OpenAI's testing program told Ars that only a few of those artists were actually part of the alpha testing group and that those artists were asked not to share confidential details during Sora's development.

    PR Puppets also later linked to a public petition encouraging others to sign up for the same message shared in their open letter. Artists Memo Akten, Jake Elwes and CROSSLUCID, who are also listed as 'sora-alpha artists', were among the first to sign this public petition.

    When can we go in?

    Sora made a big splash when OpenAI first teased its video generation capabilities in February, before purchasing the technology in Hollywood and using it in a public service advertisement for Toys R Us. Since then, however, publicly accessible video generators like Minimax and announcements from in-development competitors from Google and Meta have stolen some of Sora's initial thunder.

    Previous OpenAI CTO Mira Murati told The Wall Street Journal in March that it planned to publicly release Sora by the end of the year. But CPO Kevin Weil said in a recent Reddit AMA that the platform's implementation has been slowed by the “need to perfect the model, get security/impersonation/other things right, and need to scale compute!”