OpenAI's Video Generating AI Is Dead On Arrival

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2:04A few months ago, OpenAI showed off Sora, a product that can generate videos based on a short text prompt, kinda like ChatGPT does for text, or Dali does for images. These videos, which are usually no more than 60 seconds long, can at times seem impressive until you notice a little detail that breaks the entire facade. like in a video where a cat wakes up its owner but the owner's arm appears to be part of the cushion and the cat's paw explodes out of its arm like an amoeba. Reactions to Sora's AI-generated videos and indeed the existence of the model itself have ranged from kind of a breathless hype to genuine fear that this will be used to replace video producers in that it can create reality adjacent videos that for a few seconds kind of seem real especially in the case in some of OpenAI's hand-picked demo videos.

2:53Yet even in these hand-picked Sora outputs, you'll find these weird little things that immediately shatter the illusion, like one where a woman's legs awkwardly shuffle, then somehow switch sides as she walks around, or blobs of people merging in the background of images. These are, on some level, genuinely remarkable technological achievements, until you consider that what they are and what they might do, and that there are problems in them that run through the entire fabric of artificial intelligence. A little over a month after Sora was announced, OpenAI would debut a series of short films, including one called Airhead, where filmmakers Shy Kids told the story of a man with a balloon for a head.

3:36And because this is AI, said balloon changes sizes 23, 24, 26, 27, 29, 32, 34, 39, 41, 42, 43, and 45 seconds into the piece, at which point I stopped counting because it got boring and I really don't want to be mean to shy kids, as this really isn't their fault. The very nature of filmmaking is that you take different shots of the same thing, something that I anticipated Sora was incapable of doing as each shot is generated fresh as Sora itself, much like all generative AI, does not actually know anything. When one asks for a man with a yellow balloon as his head, Sora must then look at the parameters spawned during its training process and create an output, guessing what a man looks like, what a balloon looks like, what a man's features are on his body, what color yellow is, what the man's doing, and so on and so forth.

4:29This becomes extremely problematic when you're working in film or television, where viewers are far more likely to see when something just doesn't look right, a problem exacerbated by moving images, high-resolution footage, and big television screens, which are now ubiquitous. Yet the press, as usual, credulously accepted Sora's, quote, stunning videos that were amazing and scary, suggesting to the public that we were on the verge of some sort of artificial intelligence takeover of the film industry, helping boy Sam Altman, their CEO, and his dumbass attempts to convince Hollywood that Sora won't destroy the movie business.

5:07These stories only serve to help Sam Altman, who desperately needs you to believe that Hollywood is scared of Sora, and even more scared of generative AI, because the more you talk about fear and lost jobs and the machines taking over, the less you ask a very, very simple question. Does any of this shit actually work? The answer, it turns out, is not very well. In a piece for FX Guide, Mike Seymour sat down with Shy Kids, the people behind Airhead, and revealed how Sora is, in many ways, a little bit useless for making films. Sora takes 10-20 minutes to generate a single 3-20 second shot, something that isn't really a problem until you realize that until the shot is rendered, you really have absolutely no idea what the hell it's going to spit out.

5:54Sora has no mechanism to connect one shot to another, even with hyper-descriptive prompts. It hallucinates extra features when you haven't asked for them, and Shy Kids were shocked by how surprised OpenAI's researchers were when they requested the ability to use a prompt to request a particular angle in a shot. A feature that was initially unavailable, it took... This is what kind of drives me crazy here, and you'll hear this in the interview with him later. These people, open AI people, when they were making this tool for making visual images, for making moving images, they didn't think that people might want different shots.

6:31I'm so glad these are the people who are in control of the future. Anyway, to quote the piece, it took hundreds of generations at 10 to 20 seconds apiece to make a minute and 19 second long film and what's really fun about this is that the movie's fine i it was kind of fine i just i have nothing really to say about it it's a minute and 20 seconds long but it's it kind of works but also the balloon looks different in every other shot this isn't shy kids's fault but also this isn't gonna get better and i will get into why as we go along these tiny little problems i've mentioned though they all lead to one overwhelming issue that Sora isn't so much a tool to make movies as it is a big fat slot machine that spits out footage that may or may not be of any use at all almost all of the footage in Airhead was graded treated stabilized and upscaled and that 10 to 20 second lead time on generations was for 480p resolution footage, meaning that even useful footage needed significant post-production work to look good enough.

7:43And just to give you an idea for the non-technical members of the audience, and this is fair, the video you see on YouTube is usually somewhere between 720p, 1080p, or 4k. The TV shows you watch usually 1080p, 4k, or upscale 1080p. These are all lots of numbers. What I'm saying is, the stuff that Sora spits out that takes burning a small zoo to spit out is incredibly low resolution on top of not being specific. Look, to put it as plainly as possible, every single time that Shy Kids wanted to generate a shot, even a three-second long shot, they would give Sora a text prompt, and then they would wait at least ten minutes to find out if it was right.

8:30and they'd have to accept footage that was subprime or inaccurate. And there's a really good example of this. If you watch Airhead, a lot of the shots are in slow motion, and you may think, oh, this is a cinematic choice, right? Because you're kind of just admiring this man with a balloon for a head going about his business. No, no, no, no, no. They found that this was just what Sora wanted to give them when they asked for it. This was, in and of itself, a hallucination, In the same way that ChatGPT will authoritatively tell you that something is true that is not, Sora will spit out a man running in slow motion, despite you not asking for that.

9:11And it's so weird. They had to, to quote them, do quite a bit of adjusting to keep the whole thing from feeling like a big slow-mo project. And it still kind of does. And that's rough. That's really rough. But you know, I'm a curious little critter. So I decided to sit down with Shy Kids' Walter Woodman to talk about his experience with Sora and have him delve a little deeper into his experience with the product. And I'd say he had a far more utopian experience and perspective on the whole thing than I expected. Now, some of you might critique Walter for being so positive about it, but I actually caution you to just listen to what he's saying, because Walter's perspective is interesting.

9:56He sees this as a tool. He doesn't see it as a replacement. And I think it's a valid perspective to come at Sora with. I also think it's a perspective that kind of accepts a conceit of OpenAI's marketing strategy, that these things will get better. If they do, perhaps Walter is right. Perhaps this will be an essential tool in filmmaking. Even though he didn't say essential, don't want to put words in the man's mouth. But I don't think that's the case. Let me talk to him. You decide for yourself.

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12:30All right. So how did the relationship between Shy Kids and OpenAI actually begin? The relationship between Shy Kids and OpenAI began when we made an installation for a film called Dolly Land, which was premiering at Toronto International Film Festival. And we were the only people that our friends at Pressman Film knew in Toronto. And so we made an installation that looked like Salvador Dali's studio inside of the basement of the St. Regis, which is where he lived and made work out of. And inside of that installation, we made a, like, you could make your own surrealist painting. And the way that you could make that was using DALI, the OpenAI program.

13:21And so the OpenAI people came to visit and check out what we were working on and making sure that it was something that they wanted to be a part of. And so they met our producer, Sydney, who they loved. She's easy to love. And we sent them our previous work. And so from there, they asked us to join this artist group. And then when Sora came out, we saw it the same time as everyone else. And we got tapped on the shoulder and said, hey, would you like to check this out and try this out? And we said, of course. And that's how it came to be. So how did you onboard? Were you just given access? Did they give you instructions?

14:15Did they physically come to you? What was that like? It was top secret. They gave us a briefcase in a cloudy room. No, it was, yeah, there was a very simple onboarding process where they walked us through the technology as well as some of its features. And yeah, it was pretty, it was pretty. And then from there, they gave us access to begin using it and making things. And you were allowed to use it without their presence. you had direct access yep yep so okay did you get um instructions on how to write effective prompts or did you just kind of do trial and error no nothing like that i mean in the artist group itself there's a lot of really amazing and thoughtful creative people who kind of show their work and show how they got to make the things that they did um but uh no not there was no real um engineering of our prompts they were very much just play kind of see what see what comes out of you you're creative people that we trust um why don't you just see what works throw throw spaghetti at the wall that's cool so during the in the piece from fx guide uh in the interview someone from shy kids said the open ai's researchers they were surprised when they were asked about being able to say specific shots um what happened there was it just that you tried to ask sora to do specific shots and it didn't work or was it just not a feature uh i think that's maybe taken a little bit out of context i think uh more so it's just people come from different disciplines.

16:14And when I say a wide shot on a 130 millimeter lens, people from my area of expertise know sort of immediately what I'm talking about. Whereas the researchers, they are more invested in sort of other things. And so it's not so much that they didn't understand or that Sora didn't understand. It's more so just there's all these terms in films like a Zolly or like a Hitchcock Zoom or all of these different things that are very understandable. But even when you go from set to set, they mean something different. So I think it's about trying to create a lingua franca between all of these sort of different, very different people and very different ways of using a tool.

17:12What I may call a zoom, you may call a dolly shot, et cetera, et cetera. So that feels like a training data challenge. Yeah, I think it's about trying to figure out how and yeah, exactly what to train on. Yeah. So tell me, what was the interface like? Was it a chat box? Did you have, like, just tell me about what it actually looked like. Sure. There's limitations of what I can say about things like that. But I think the way that I've described it to people without giving too much away is I think if you're familiar with using something like the Adobe Suite, I think that there's some commonalities, whether you're using After Effects or Premiere or whatever, Illustrator, there's like commonalities.

18:09And if you can use one, you can sort of futz your way around the others. I would say it's very similar like that with open ai's tools and models that if you are used to things like chat gpt and dolly and and those types of models i think you will find it find an ease of use in using zora so within that article they mentioned that there was like a 300 to 1 shooting ratio which correct me if I'm wrong, means like 300 seconds of material for each second of usable material. How does that compare to conventional filmmaking in your experience? It would be even more seconds than that. I would say just 300 shots at probably 10 to 20 seconds a piece.

19:02So whatever the math is on that. I would say that that's pretty common with shooting. you know when you are shooting a fiction film or like even a documentary is even crazier for that you shoot all day and all day and from we shot a documentary recently and I actually had to go back and watch all the dailies we counted about 90 hours of footage that we had and from that 90 hours you're making an hour and a half movie so you know you are really trimming things down and i think also it's like you are getting the five seconds that work or the um you know the section of that shot that works and um i would say that's pretty common to filmmaking um how about narrative filmmaking because i know documentary you have a lot of stuff but i'm just wondering what the burden of selection is like compared to the amount of shots you take in just a regular movie or a regular short film even again i would say at least i can only speak for the way that i shoot films you know if you had john it's it's subjective it's subjective for sure if you're david fincher you're shooting 800 takes of like someone picking up a pencil or stanley kubrick you know is like famous for a thousand takes.

20:28I would say that the burn rate was very similar. I would say that the challenges with Sora are like, it's unbelievable at making these images that are unbelievable and so interesting to look at. But at its current state, it can sometimes be difficult to do things that in traditional shooting would be much easier where you say hey can that guy go over here or can that person move from one side of the screen to the other things like that are are more difficult but again this is this is baby steps we are in like the toddler phase so I assume that those things will get better so you mentioned well shy kids mentioned in the in the interview the by default it tries to prevent you from creating videos that violate copyright law existing copyrights did you accidentally bump into this regularly or was this something that just you didn't really bother you uh no you couldn't uh generate things that so when i was mentioning like a hitchcock zoom you couldn't mention hitchcock so you had to find a different way to describe that as opposed to um like using uh public figures anything that would have a public figure or a title uh you would not be allowed to generate um from my experience there wasn't too many logos or brands or anything like that in any of the things that i generated and but something copyright did you generate anything that looked copyrighted no not not to my not to my eye that's fine um so well i i know you don't know how much sora will cost and we don't know that don't even know when it will launch can you talk about how much you'd be willing to pay for it what do you think it's worth and i realize that this is a vague question for sure um i think that there is this illusion that Sora will be this solution to all problems.

22:42And I don't think that that is the case. I think Sora is a tool amongst many tools. And for certain things, it will be very valuable. And so in terms of value, it's like, well, how much is a glass of water. Well, yes, if a glass of water is just like right now in my kitchen, I wouldn't like to pay that high for it. If a glass of water is for a person in the desert who desperately needs that glass of water, you can really name your price. And I would say that for some projects, I think that the usage of Sora would be absolutely invaluable. And I would, I would, I don't know how much exactly that would be.

23:26It would depend on the budget, would depend on the limits and the scales. But I would say that there's other projects where I think it would be like totally inappropriate or like just not worth. Like what? Well, just when I think of studio Ghibli films that are hand drawn. And I think the reason that those films work is because of the way that they're made. Or I think that when you think of Aardman animation, it's like, I feel that you could feel the fingerprints in that clay and so i don't think maybe for those types of films that it would be appropriate but i think for other types of films like airhead or others i think it would be extremely uh appropriate i think it's up to the artist's sort of discretion how much they think that that tool is needed um it's but doesn't doesn't the inconsistency of shots make this deeply impractical?

24:26Because that's the thing I kept coming back to. Yeah, I mean, depends on what project you're working on. And again, I think that this is like early days. I think that these are kinks and bugs that are going to be changed. And already from day one, where we started using it to where we are today, massive improvements have happened and actually improvements where they've listened to things that we have suggested and things that we'd like to see and tools we'd like to see. So I think that, for example, for Airhead, the inconsistency of having a protagonist that stays true through all these different shots, that's the reason why we put a balloon in front of their head because while different bodies can sort of be accepted, a different face and a different head is going to be a little bit difficult.

25:26And so we turned the limitation into our sort of main attribute. And I would say that, again, that works for that story. But I don't think that all stories are going to find this valuable. And I also don't think every single shot needs to come from Sora. I think that there's a world where it can be an addition or it can be the start of a story where instead of just brainstorming and just having a script, you make a sort of moving mood board or a trailer. So I think that there's like tons of stages along the pipeline that it would be extremely valuable and help elucidate concepts and bring them to life.

26:18so thematic question so you avoided filming locations and all of this but you spent a lot of time writing prompts and you're waiting for sora to generate clips then upscaling and all that do you think you could make airhead assuming you could get around the balloon head thing do you think you could make it quicker in real life than with sora was sora kind of essential to get it done in the timeline you did because it's like a week and a half two weeks i think Yeah. I don't know. That's an interesting question. I mean, we definitely wouldn't be able to fly around the world and get the shots at the car race and all of those things.

26:58So I think it would probably be shorter. But I think in general, the conversations about time and money are super reductive in a way, in that I think that without Sora, this wouldn't exist. And I think that that is the more interesting conversation. as a director, most directors I know have a folder of unrealized ideas. And I think that my hope is that Sora will allow us to dust off those folders and breathe new life into concepts. And when people see what those concepts could be, my hope is that it gives a lot more people opportunities to have their, um, their ideas illuminated and, and whether that means to go and shoot it now traditionally or some hybrid.

27:55Um, I think that that to me is what's most exciting. So where do you see Sora going? I know you're considering looking at it as kind of a complimentary tool, but do you think that that's its use case or do you think it'll ever do end-to-end filmmaking? I think let a thousand flowers bloom. I think that there is people who are going to just use it for small complementary things to maybe help with, in the same way we use stock footage now. I think some people are going to use it as a way, say you are from a community that has maybe a little bit of a less established film community. And it's a way to have you compete with the big boys in terms of special effects and usage.

28:49And again, I don't just think it's as easy as bleep, bloop, blop, type in the prompt, here comes the thing. but rather it allows you to just have a really powerful collaborator that you can help make maybe larger concepts and bigger ideas. And then, yeah, I think that there's some people end to end who are going to make things that are completely generated or most of the shots in it are generated or things like that. in general, the thing that feels interesting to me is like helping to deepen humanity. Whereas the more you sort of simplify the process, I think that that is like, I don't know, it's never a simple process.

29:39So anytime you hear about something that is going to make it all easy and make all your troubles go away, I'd be very wary of that. I think film is going to always be difficult and a challenge. And I think the benefit of Sora will be to help lead us into new paths and lead us into new directions. If I were to tell you, hey, we made this film called Lord of the Rings, and it uses CGI orcs, and it makes massive orc fights. If I told you that in the 1930s, you'd probably gasp. Or if I told you that CGI is going to be a predominant way in which we make films in 2024, I think you would go, ah, that's not real filmmaking.

30:26And I don't think... I think you kind of saw that in the 90s, actually. Yeah. I don't think history is too kind to those people that go, this is not going to work. This is not art this technology is not the way i just think it's it depends on the artist and it depends what they want to bring to it i think that's that's the key x factor here one final question with that all in mind do you think that sora is going to hurt filmmakers do you think it's going to replace people i mean i hope not i mean that's my job so i i would very hope not No, I very much understand people's fears. And I think that, you know, I'm a student of history.

31:19So when I look back in history and the camera obscura comes out, painters are talking about how we aren't going to need painters anymore because now we can capture reality. Why do you need a painter to go and paint it? And it's a very valid point, but painters didn't go away. And then there was this whole new industry called photography. And then after photography, there was this whole new industry called film. And then after film, there was this whole new industry called home video. And then after home video, there was this whole new industry called cell phone video. And then there was this whole new industry called TikToks and Vines.

32:01And I just think that when people don't come in contact with things, they're immediate. As humans, our immediate reaction is fear. And we're worried about things that are new because we do not yet understand them. And I think that for us, we like to face those things face on. And I think that the other side of that coin is that there's some kid right now in rural Bangladesh who has this amazing big idea and maybe doesn't have all the resources that everyone else has. And with these types of technologies, it may level the playing field for kids like that to compete with the avatars of the world, compete with the marvels of the world.

32:53And then I think we're going to all be on this level playing field. And what's going to matter is not just who has the highest budgets and who has the most resources, but who has the best stories. And for me, that's the exciting part. We work with groups of collaborators that we love and respect. And our hope is never let's work with them less. our hope is always let's enrich those relationships and hopefully grow them and hopefully bring more people into our collective and more people into our process. So that's our hope. Maybe I'm utopic, maybe I'm wrong, but that's the choice. That's the way we're choosing to look at this.

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