OpenAI has finally launched Sora, its AI text-to-video generator to the general public, as part of the ongoing “12 days of OpenAI” campaign. About nine months ago, the ChatGPT maker announced Sora but kept delaying its release due to safety testing. Now, users can access the flagship AI video generator right away. OpenAI says this is the improved Sora Turbo model which is faster and more efficient.
First off, you can access Sora at sora.com and you don’t need a separate subscription. With your existing ChatGPT Plus or Pro subscription, you can start using Sora. Sora allows you to generate AI videos up to 20 seconds in 480p, 720p, and 1080p resolutions. As you would expect, generating FHD AI videos using Sora takes a couple of minutes, but 480p video generation is pretty fast.
Next, you can enter detailed text prompts to start generating videos on Sora. You can also upload images and videos on Sora and add your own prompt to produce AI videos based on the uploaded media. Keep in mind that Sora prohibits users from uploading media containing people without their consent or under the age of 18.
In addition, it doesn’t allow media containing violence, explicit themes, or copyright content. Finally, OpenAI warns that violation of any of these agreements may lead to account termination and the user may be banned without any refund.
Coming to Sora’s features, it has something called “Remix” which lets you add a new prompt to an existing video and lets you recreate something new. You can also set the Remix strength which basically determines the intensity of your edit. After that, the “Storyboard” feature in Sora lets you generate videos in a timeline. You can add multiple text prompts in a row and blend them together to create a continuous video.
As for the quality of Sora-generated AI videos, the initial impression is that it struggles with the laws of physics. While it tries to maintain consistency, Sora fails to understand realistic dynamics such as gravity, motion, momentum, etc. in videos involving human and object movements. But if you want to generate animated videos and abstract scenes, Sora does a great job. It can also produce texts in videos pretty accurately.
As for availability, Sora is live in nearly all regions except in the UK and Europe. ChatGPT Plus users can generate 50 videos in a month (720p resolution, 5-second duration), and ChatGPT Pro users can generate 500 videos (1080p, 20-second duration).
