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OpenAI CEO Sam Altman speaks during the Microsoft Build conference at the Seattle Convention Center Summit Building in Seattle, Washington on May 21, 2024.
Image Credits:JASON REDMOND/AFP / Getty Images
AI

OpenAI’s Sora video generator appears to have leaked

Kyle Wiggers

A group appears to have leaked access to Sora, OpenAI’s video generator, in protest of what it’s calling duplicity and “art washing” on OpenAI’s part.

On Tuesday, the group published a project on the AI dev platform Hugging Face seemingly connected to OpenAI’s Sora API, which isn’t yet publicly available. Using their authentication tokens — presumably from an early access system — the group created a front end that lets users generate videos with Sora.

Through the group’s front end, any user can generate 10-second videos up to 1080p resolution by typing a short text description. When TechCrunch tried, the queue was quite long — but several users on X managed to upload samples, most of which bore OpenAI’s distinctive visual watermark.

As of 12:01 p.m. Eastern, the front end was no longer working. We’d venture to guess that OpenAI and/or Hugging Face revoked access.

The group claims that, after three hours, OpenAI shut down Sora’s early access temporarily for all artists.

So why did the group do this? It claims that OpenAI is pressuring Sora’s early testers, including red teamers and creative partners, to spin a positive narrative around Sora and failing to fairly compensate them for their work.

“Hundreds of artists provide unpaid labor through bug testing, feedback and experimental work for the [Sora early access] program for a $150B valued [sic] company,” the group, which calls itself “Sora PR Puppets,” wrote in a post attached to the front end. “This early access program appears to be less about creative expression and critique, and more about PR and advertisement.”

The group didn’t originally identify its members. But over the course of the day, it began to list out a few in the attachment on Hugging Face — and a separate petition.

The group also claims that OpenAI is being misleading about Sora’s capabilities by keeping early access users on a tight leash. Every Sora output needs to be approved by OpenAI before it’s shared widely, the group says, and only a few creators in the program will be selected to have their Sora-created works screened.

“We are not against the use of AI technology as a tool for the arts (if we were, we probably wouldn’t have been invited to this program),” the group wrote. “What we don’t agree with is how this artist program has been rolled out and how the tool is shaping up ahead of a possible public release. We are sharing this to the world in the hopes that OpenAI becomes more open, more artist friendly and supports the arts beyond PR stunts.”

In a statement, an OpenAI spokesperson said that Sora remains in a “research preview,” and that the company’s “working to balance creativity with robust safety measures for broader use.”

“Hundreds of artists in our alpha have shaped Sora’s development, helping prioritize new features and safeguards,” the spokesperson said. “Participation is voluntary, with no obligation to provide feedback or use the tool. We’ve been excited to offer these artists free access and will continue supporting them through grants, events, and other programs. We believe AI can be a powerful creative tool and are committed to making Sora both useful and safe.”

The spokesperson went on to say that artists “have no obligations” to OpenAI beyond “responsibly” using Sora, and refraining from sharing confidential details while Sora’s under development. They didn’t clarify what “responsible” use entails, however, nor did they say which details OpenAI considers to be confidential.

Since its debut earlier this year, Sora has suffered technical setbacks as rivals in the video generation space feverishly work to overtake it. Not helping matters, one of the co-leads on Sora, Tim Brooks, left OpenAI for Google in early October.

In a recent Reddit AMA, OpenAI chief product officer Kevin Weil said that Sora was being held back by the “need to perfect the model, get safety/impersonation/other things right, and scale compute.” Per The Information, the original system, revealed in February, took more than 10 minutes of processing time to make a one-minute video clip.

Consistency was also an issue with early iterations of Sora. Filmmaker Patrick Cederberg had to generate hundreds of clips before getting a usable one, as the model struggled to maintain styles, objects, and characters throughout videos.

The leaked Sora seems to be a faster, “turbo” variant, according to code uncovered by X users. The code also hints at style controls and limited customization options.

Per The Information, OpenAI has been training Sora on millions of hours of high-quality clips covering a range of styles and subjects to improve the quality of its generated videos.

Aside from tech-related hurdles, OpenAI has ceded valuable partnership ground to video-generation challengers in recent months. In September, Runway signed a deal with Lionsgate, the studio behind “John Wick,” to train a custom video model on Lionsgate’s movie catalog. Roughly a week later, Stability, which is developing its own set of video-generation models, recruited “Avatar” director James Cameron to its board.

OpenAI was said to be meeting with filmmakers and Hollywood studios earlier this year to demo Sora; ex-CTO Mira Murati attended Cannes. But the company has yet to announce a collaboration with a major production house.

Update: Added a statement from OpenAI.

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Kyle Wiggers
Kyle Wiggers is TechCrunch’s AI Editor. His writing has appeared in VentureBeat and Digital Trends, as well as a range of gadget blogs including Android Police, Android Authority, Droid-Life, and XDA-Developers. He lives in Manhattan with his partner, a music therapist.
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