OpenAI's Sora is Another AI Warning for Hollywood


You will doubtlessly have seen the short clips created by OpenAI’s new Sora text-to-video AI tool circulating online in recent days. They are not great, by which I mean it’s not all that difficult to tell they were made using artificial intelligence, in the same way that you can mostly tell when a still image has been made by Midjourney. However, the clips put out by OpenAI do give a clear indication as to the direction of travel. They hint at what might be possible in the not-too-distant future. No wonder writers and actors were freaking out last year.

I always worry that I’m being naive about the advance of AI. Look how quickly things have already changed. Maybe we should all just give up and sit on our AR headsets (sorry Apple, spatial computers) and let the robots entertain us!

However, I still firmly believe that humans want authentic work – written, audio or visual – created by other humans and it will be a long time before that changes. As the inevitable rise of AI-generated content accelerates, people will likely find more value in work made by their fellow humans. Furthermore, AI models are, at this stage at least, essentially only being built on work humans have already done. It is why firms are splashing the cash to get work from all sorts of sources, including universities (via 404 Media).

In the short term, those making movies for theatrical release have bigger things to worry about than the early days of a new tool from OpenAI. The Wall Street Journal reported:

Through the first three days of Presidents Day weekend, films that have been released widely in theaters have grossed $764.1 million, down 15% from the same period last year, according to box-office tracker Comscore.

Read More With a Paid Subscription

The Addition

Charlotte Henry is a journalist and broadcaster who creates and runs The Addition newsletter and podcast; an award-winning publication looking at the crossover between media and technology.

Read more from The Addition

Welcome to The Addition, where I cover the crossover between media tech and culture. Apologies for the late hour at which this newsletter reaches you. I've been at the Publisher Newsletter Awards. More on that on Thursday... Politico and media types like to smugly dismiss election debates, frequently claiming they don’t change very much. I’ve done it myself. Well, the events of the last few weeks have rather put paid to that notion. A disastrous performance from President Joe Biden confirmed...

Welcome to The Addition, where I bring together tech, media and culture. It's been a busy week this week. If you want more on what is happening in British politics, check out the House of Comments podcast I co-present with Emma Burnell. It's another way to get the paid version of this newsletter too. If you sign up via Patreon, you get this newsletter, my co-host Emma's newsletter and the extra episodes at the bargain price of £5 a month. When Netflix announced an ad-supported tier it felt...

Welcome to The Addition, where I cover the intersection of media, tech and culture. Inevitably, politics often seeps into that, as is the case this week. If you enjoy this newsletter, take out a paid subscription. Want more politics? Check out my podcast House of Comments. It is also another great way to get the paid version of this newsletter. If you sign up via Patreon, you get this newsletter, my co-host Emma Burnell's newsletter and the extra episodes for £5 a month. After a busy Saturday...