> People are generating much more than we expected per user, and a lot of videos are being generated for very small audiences.
What did OpenAI expect, really? They imposed no meaningful generation limits and and "very small audiences" is literally the point of an invite-only program.
Update after more testing: looks like every popular video game prompt (even those not owned by Nintendo) triggers a Content Warning, and prompting "Italian video game plumber" didn't work either. Even indie games like Slay the Spire and Undertale got rejected. The only one that didn't trigger a "similarity to third party content" Content Violation was Cyberpunk 2077.
Even content like Spongebob and Rick and Morty is now being rejected after having flooded the feeds.
And I don't think you can revenue share these generations with rights owners just like that. What rights owner will let their "product" be depicted in any imaginable situation by any prompt by anyone in the planet? Words are powerful and images a 1000 words worth, videos are a millionth fold... I've seen a quick Sora video from OpenAI themselves I believe of the real life Mario Bros Princess, a rather voluptuous one, playing herself on a console and the image stuck. And it's not just misuse, distortion or appropriation but also association: imagine a series of very viral videos of Pikachu drinking Coke or a fan series of Goku with friends at KFC... it could condition, or steal, future marketing deals for the rights holders.
This is a non-starter, unless you own a "license to AI" from the rights owner directly, such as an ad agency that uses Sora to generate an ad it was hired to do.
The detail that rightsholders seem to be demanding a revenue share is interesting. That sounds administratively and technologically very complex to implement and probably also just plain expensive to implement.
This "but it's too hard to implement" excuse never made sense to me. So it's doable to make a system like this, to have smart people working on it, hire and poach other smart people, to have payments systems, tracking systems, personal data collection, request filtering and content awareness, all that jazz, but somehow all of that grinds to a halt the moment a question like this arises? and it's been a problem for years, yet some of the smartest people are just unable to approach it, let alone solve it? Does it not seem idiotic to see them serve 'most advanced' products over and over, and then pretend like this question is "too complex" for them to solve? Shouldn't they be smart enough to rise up to that level of "complexity" anyway?
Seems more like selective, intentional ignoring of the problem to me. It's just because if they start to pay up, everyone will want to get paid, and paying other people is something that companies like this systematically try to avoid as much as possible.
You make a good point. They may well as admit at this point that curing cancer, new physics, and AGI aren't going to happen very soon.
What surprises me a bit is that they'd take this TikTok route, rather than selling Sora as a very expensive storyboarding tool to film/tv studios, producers, etc. Why package it as an app for your neice to make viral videos that's bound to lose money with every click? Just sell it for $50k/hr of video to someone with deep pockets. Is it just a publicity stunt?
Well, yeah, but that stuff was all bullshit, whereas the fake tiktok kind of exists and might keep the all-important money taps on for another six months or so.
I don't have access but it seems you can impose a friend into a video? Are we not rightsholders to our own likeness? It seems like a person should be able to block a video someone shares without their consent or earn revenue then if their likeness is used.
So that sounds like they "released" this fully aware it would generate loads of hype, but never ever be legally feasible to release at scale, so we can expect some heavily cut down version to eventually become publicly released?
It is already illegal to use images in somebody's likeness for commercial purposes or purposes that harm their reputation, could be confusing, etc... Basically the only times you could use these images are for some parodies, for public figures, and fair use.
Now, the OpenAI will be lecturing their own users, while expecting them to make them rich. I suspect, the users will find it insulting.
Generation for personal use is not illegal, as far as I know.
I don't understand some parts of this, the writing doesn't seem to flow logically from one thought to another.
> Second, we are going to have to somehow make money for video generation. People are generating much more than we expected per user, and a lot of videos are being generated for very small audiences.
> We are going to try sharing some of this revenue with rightsholders who want their characters generated by users.
> The exact model will take some trial and error to figure out, but we plan to start very soon. Our hope is that the new kind of engagement is even more valuable than the revenue share, but of course we we want both to be valuable.
The first part of this paragraph implies that the video generation service is more expensive than they expected, because users are generating more videos than they expected and sharing them less. The next sentence then references sharing revenue with "rightsholders"? What revenue? The first part makes it sound like there's very little left over after paying for inference.
Secondly, to make a prediction about the future business model - it sounds like large companies (disney, nintendo, etc) will be able to enter revenue sharing agreements with OpenAI where users pay extra to use specific brand characters in their generated videos, and some of that licensing cost will be returned to the "rightsholders". But I bet everyone else - you, me, small youtube celebrities - will be left out in the cold with no controls over their likeness. After all, it's not like they could possibly identify every single living person and tie them to their likeness.
“Dear rights holders, we abused your content to train our closed model, but rest assured we’ll figure out a way to get you pennies back if you don’t get too mad at us”
"Sora Update #4: Through a partnership with Google, Meta and Snap Inc., you will be able to generate tasteful photos of the cute girl you saw on the bus. She will receive a compensation of $0.007 once she signs our universal content creators' agreement."
Obviously, OpenAI could have had copyright restrictions in place from the get-go with this, but instead made an intentional decision to allow people to generate everything ranging from Spongebob videos to Michael Jackson videos to South Park videos.
Today, Sora users on reddit are pretty much beside themselves because of newly enabled content restrictions. They are (apparently) no longer able to generate these types of videos and see no use for the service without that ability!
To me it raises two questions:
1) Was the initial "free for all" a marketing ploy?
2) Is it the case that people find these video generators a lot less interesting when they have to come up with original ideas for the videos and cannot use copyright characters, etc?
Considering that these models are trained on existing data to remix it means that when you shackle their ability to remix existing IP’s they’re practically useless because there’s little originality if any to squeeze out of them to begin with.
Is this a roundabout way to say that they've realised that people are using their service to make porn of celebrities and fictional characters in the entertainment industry, and aim to figure out a way to keep making money from it without involving "rightsholders" in scandals?
> In particular, we'd like to acknowledge the remarkable creative output of Japan--we are struck by how deep the connection between users and Japanese content is!
Translation from snake speech bs: We've been threatened by Japanese artists via their lawyers that unless we remove the "Ghibli" feature that earned us so much money, and others like it, we're going to get absolutely destroyed in court.
> "We are hearing from a lot of rightsholders who are very excited for this new kind of "interactive fan fiction" and think this new kind of engagement will accrue a lot of value to them, but want the ability to specify how their characters can be used (including not at all)"
Marvelous ability to convolute the simple message "rightholders told us to fuck off"
It is sad (and predictable, PR- and legal-wise) that there was no mention of the Ghibli Studio.
I would be actually moved if there was some genuine in the line of "We are sorry - we wanted to make a PR stunt, but we went to hard." and offered real $ for that. (Not that I believe it is going to happen, as GenAI does not like this kind of precedence.)
>Second, we are going to have to somehow make money for video generation. People are generating much more than we expected per user, and a lot of videos are being generated for very small audiences.
Once again, Scam Altman looking for excuses to raise more money. What a joke…
42 comments
[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 61.0 ms ] thread> People are generating much more than we expected per user, and a lot of videos are being generated for very small audiences.
What did OpenAI expect, really? They imposed no meaningful generation limits and and "very small audiences" is literally the point of an invite-only program.
Even content like Spongebob and Rick and Morty is now being rejected after having flooded the feeds.
This is a non-starter, unless you own a "license to AI" from the rights owner directly, such as an ad agency that uses Sora to generate an ad it was hired to do.
Seems more like selective, intentional ignoring of the problem to me. It's just because if they start to pay up, everyone will want to get paid, and paying other people is something that companies like this systematically try to avoid as much as possible.
Woke: AI slop tictoc to waste millions of human-hours.
What surprises me a bit is that they'd take this TikTok route, rather than selling Sora as a very expensive storyboarding tool to film/tv studios, producers, etc. Why package it as an app for your neice to make viral videos that's bound to lose money with every click? Just sell it for $50k/hr of video to someone with deep pockets. Is it just a publicity stunt?
Now, the OpenAI will be lecturing their own users, while expecting them to make them rich. I suspect, the users will find it insulting.
Generation for personal use is not illegal, as far as I know.
Secondly, to make a prediction about the future business model - it sounds like large companies (disney, nintendo, etc) will be able to enter revenue sharing agreements with OpenAI where users pay extra to use specific brand characters in their generated videos, and some of that licensing cost will be returned to the "rightsholders". But I bet everyone else - you, me, small youtube celebrities - will be left out in the cold with no controls over their likeness. After all, it's not like they could possibly identify every single living person and tie them to their likeness.
Neither has most of the stuff Sam has said since basically the moment he started talking.
It is possible, perhaps, that he is actually a very stupid person!
(i) they will need to start charging money per generation (ii) they will share some of this money with rightsholders
Wasn’t he literally scanning eye balls a couple years ago?
Today, Sora users on reddit are pretty much beside themselves because of newly enabled content restrictions. They are (apparently) no longer able to generate these types of videos and see no use for the service without that ability!
To me it raises two questions:
1) Was the initial "free for all" a marketing ploy?
2) Is it the case that people find these video generators a lot less interesting when they have to come up with original ideas for the videos and cannot use copyright characters, etc?
Translation from snake speech bs: We've been threatened by Japanese artists via their lawyers that unless we remove the "Ghibli" feature that earned us so much money, and others like it, we're going to get absolutely destroyed in court.
> enable generating ghibli content since users are ADDICTED to that style
> willingly ignore the fact that the people who own this content don't want this
> wait a few days
> "ooooh we're so sorry for letting these users generate copyrighted content"
> disables it via some dumb ahh prompt detection algorithm
> dumb down the model and features even more
> add expensive pricing
> wait a few months
> launch new model without all of these restrictions again so that the difference to the new model feels insane
Marvelous ability to convolute the simple message "rightholders told us to fuck off"
I can't tell if this is face saving or delusion.
I would be actually moved if there was some genuine in the line of "We are sorry - we wanted to make a PR stunt, but we went to hard." and offered real $ for that. (Not that I believe it is going to happen, as GenAI does not like this kind of precedence.)
Once again, Scam Altman looking for excuses to raise more money. What a joke…