OpenAI’s new text-to-video app, Sora, was supposed to be a social AI playground, allowing users to create imaginative AI videos of themselves, friends and celebrities while building off of others’ ideas.
The social structure of the app, which allows users to adjust the availability of their likeness in others’ videos, seemed to address the most pressing questions of consent around AI-generated video when it was launched last week.
But as Sora sits atop the iOS App Store with over 1 million downloads, experts worry about its potential to deluge the internet with historical misinformation and deepfakes of deceased historical figures who cannot consent to or opt out of Sora’s AI models.
In less than a minute, the app can generate short videos of deceased celebrities in situations they were never in: Aretha Franklin making soy candles, Carrie Fisher trying to balance on a slackline, Nat King Cole ice skating in Havana and Marilyn Monroe teaching Vietnamese to schoolchildren, for instance.
That’s a nightmare for people like Adam Streisand, an attorney who has represented several celebrity estates, including Monroe’s at one point.
“The challenge with AI is not the law,” Streisand said in an email, pointing out that California’s courts have long protected celebrities “from AI-like reproductions of their images or voices.”
“The question is whether a non-AI judicial process that depends on human beings will ever be able to play an almost 5th dimensional game of whack-a-mole.”
Videos on Sora range from the absurd to the delightful to the confusing. Aside from celebrities, many videos on Sora show convincing deepfakes of manipulated historical moments.
For example, NBC News was able to generate realistic videos of President Dwight Eisenhower confessing to accepting millions of dollars in bribes, U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher arguing that the “so-called D-Day landings” were overblown, and President John F. Kennedy announcing that the moon landing was “not a triumph of science but a fabrication.”
The ability to generate such deepfakes of nonconsenting deceased individuals has already caused complaints from family members.
In an Instagram story posted Monday about Sora videos featuring Robin Williams, who died in 2014, Williams’ daughter Zelda wrote: “If you’ve got any decency, just stop doing this to him and to me, to everyone even, full stop. It’s dumb, it’s a waste of time and energy, and believe me, it’s NOT what he’d want.”
Bernice King, Martin Luther King Jr.’s daughter, wrote on X: “I concur concerning my father. Please stop.” King’s famous “I have a dream” speech has been continuously manipulated and remixed on the app.
George Carlin’s daughter said in a BlueSky post that his family was “doing our best to combat” deepfakes of the late comedian.
Sora-generated videos depicting “horrific violence” involving renowned physicist Stephen Hawking have also surged in popularity this week, with many examples circulating on X.
A spokesperson for OpenAI told NBC News: “While there are strong free speech interests in depicting historical figures,