OpenAI Says Sora Will Launch in 2024 and Nude Videos Aren’t Off the Table

OpenAI’s Sora, the startup’s hyperrealistic AI video generator, is “definitely” going to be released in 2024, according to Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati in an interview with the Wall Street Journal Wednesday. Nude videos are not off the table, according to Murati, who says OpenAI is working with “creators” to determine the next steps.

“I’m not sure,” said Murati when asked about nudity. “You can imagine that there are creative settings in which artists might want to have more control over that. Right now we are working with artists, creators from different fields to figure out what’s useful, what level of flexibility should the tool provide.”

Early use of AI-image generators shed light on how the technology can be dangerous, especially when used to create deepfake porn. AI-generated deepfakes of Taylor Swift in pornographic situations went viral in January. Just last week, Florida middle schoolers were arrested for allegedly creating AI deepfaked nudes of their classmates, according to Wired.

At the same time, AI-generated nude videos as realistic as Sora could revolutionize the porn industry. There’s a reason OpenAI is not ruling it out completely, despite how much chaos nude AI image generators created. Porn is a $97 billion industry, and AI video generation could address issues around sex trafficking and abuse. It’s unclear if “creators from different fields” include adult film stars, but those are certainly the creators with the most expertise in nude videos.

OpenAI’s Sora team is working on video editing, according to Murati, which could be a game changer for using Sora as a real tool for filmmakers. Sora will not have sound, at least in this first version, but that’s something OpenAI will innovate on in the future.

Sora was trained on photos from Shutterstock, building on OpenAI’s partnership with the photo library, Murati confirmed, alongside “publicly available data and other licensed data.” OpenAI declined to get into specifics about Sora’s training data, though the company says it’s possible that public Instagram and Facebook videos were used.

The world was shocked by OpenAI’s Sora last month, creating AI-generated, hyperrealistic videos that flowed smoothly together. Early demos of Sora were impressive, including detailed videos of wooly mammoths, cityscapes, and cartoonish worlds. However, Sora’s demos shed light on how fast AI technology is progressing, and the world could be just months away from trying it out.