OpenAI has added a new Sora video generator for ChatGPT that can create videos from text, animate images and convert existing videos to new styles.
OpenAI made Sora widely available to the general public on Monday after a video ad show what AI could do.
Related: Would you pay $200 for ChatGPT? OpenAI’s new reasoning model comes with a hefty price tag.
According to OpenAI’s demo video, Sora starts with a text prompt, image, or video, which it then uses to generate videos in resolutions ranging from 480p to 1080p. It currently produces between 5 and 20 seconds of video.
Sora can also generate different options for the same prompt. So if a user isn’t sure what they want their AI video to look like, they can ask Sora to generate one, two, or four variations of the same prompt to get more options.
OpenAI researchers demo four variations of the prompt “A wide shot of woolly mammoths walking across a desert landscape” in 480p resolution with 10 seconds of video.
How much does Sora cost?
The cost of the service is included in the company’s paid plans.
ChatGPT Plus subscribers who pay $20 per month get up to 50 generations per month. ChatGPT Pro subscribers, who pay $200 per month, can generate unlimited amounts.
Related: New OpenAI project isn’t ‘widely’ available yet, but it’s already setting off alarm bells
What was the controversy over Sora?
OpenAI Sora was first introduced in February. From the start, Sora was controversial and set off the alarm bell because of its creative potential deep fakes or very realistic videos of people.
Rohan Sahai, head of product engineering at Sora, acknowledged the challenge of moderating content in the announcement video.
“As OpenAI, we obviously have an important goal to achieve, so we want to prevent Sora’s illegal activities, but we also want to balance that with creative expression,” Sahai said. “We know this is something that will be an ongoing challenge. We may not be perfect on day one… Just give us your feedback, we’ll iterate.”
Although OpenAI has teased the dreamscapes Sora could create from the text, a small group of artists were angry at the company for asking them to be unpaid testers for Sora. These artists Sora disclosed last month for a few hours before OpenAI shut down the test version completely.
Related: Testers leak OpenAI’s new AI video generator, claiming they were used as ‘unpaid labor’
How Sora could help businesses
Sora generates videos from text, images, and other videos, which could save businesses time and labor when it comes to creating shareable content.
Businesses can use Sora to refresh videos they already have on hand or create new ones. This can work for creating ads, generating content for social media, and even brainstorming internally. For example, a 20-second video clip created by Sora could kick off a meeting or create the basis for a social media campaign.
Related: Here’s what Sora, OpenAI’s text-to-video creator, can do
