Movie-making magic, directed by AI
OpenAI’s Thursday unveiling of Sora, which turns verbal commands into remarkably life-like movie clips, sent shockwaves through both the tech and media worlds.
Why it matters
Other firms have their own text-to-video tools, but OpenAI has upped the wow factor.
Everyone knew this was coming — but not this soon.
What’s happening
AI as a tool for the execution of human intentions seemed to take another leap with Sora’s ability to take a couple of sentences from a user and crank out a convincing video up to a minute long.
It’s not just that the images look real — it’s that they feel like movies, the way ChatGPT’s conversations sometimes feel like human speech.
Sora has what Wired’s Steven Levy called “an emergent grasp of cinematic grammar.”
What they’re doing
“We’re teaching AI to understand and simulate the physical world in motion,” OpenAI’s article introducing Sora declared.
For the company’s researchers, teaching neural networks to develop a human toddler’s grasp of basic physics — motion and gravity, continuity over time, common sense knowledge like “you can’t unbreak an egg” — is a key step on the road to the grail of artificial general intelligence.
About E. J. McKay
E.J.McKay is a Shanghai-headquartered investment bank with a special focus on mergers & acquisitions. We are one of the most long standing independent investment banks in China, with core business of mergers & acquisitions and financing advisory.