The Scoop: OpenAI’s Sora already showing promise — and ringing alarm bells

Plus: Lay’s touts ‘real potatoes’; conservative influencers become part of the story in Portland.

AI-generated video is here at a massive scale and already changing how we view the world around us.

Sora, an app from OpenAI, is a free app that allows users to create their own video based on a simple text prompt. In just five days, it garnered 1 million downloads — a pace even faster than its sister app ChatGPT.

Sora isn’t just a video creation app. It also allows you to browse videos created by other users, making it a social media app of sorts as well. But this also allows us to see just how these tools are being used — and the answers aren’t always pretty.

Business Insider Katie Notopoulos reports that the app’s early adopters seem to be teenage boys. That means that the videos can lean decidedly toward the juvenile: Stephen Hawking doing skateboard tricks in his wheelchair, Mr. Rogers saying wildly out-of-character things, Logan Paul saying he’s gay.

Living people must give their permission to appear on the app — that’s why late celebrities like Rogers and Hawking are OK, as is Paul, who consented. Initially, the app required copyright holders to opt out if they didn’t want their fictional characters appearing on the app, but OpenAI CEO Sam Altman quickly realized why the internet cannot be trusted.

“I think the theory of what it was going to feel like to people, and then actually seeing the thing, people had different responses,” Altman said. “It felt more different to images than people expected.”

Why it matters: The fact that Altman did not anticipate how quickly this app would turn into videos of Nazi SpongeBob shows that OpenAI may not be ready to contain the app it created. While it theoretically doesn’t allow images of living people to be used, it’s not hard to imagine workarounds where fictional people wearing colors very similar to your company’s uniforms are engaging in unsavory behavior. Or even videos by a dead person associated with your brand could lead to negative connotations — think Walt Disney spouting hateful language.

On the other hand, the app could become a new social platform, filled with creativity and chances to connect in quirky ways, much like TikTok. Who would have ever thought that an app largely created based on lip syncing would become the juggernaut it is today?

But at the moment, there remain warning signs. As Notopolous puts it: “There are also just tons and tons of potential trust-and-safety and content-moderation nightmares. And if the tenor of the platform is already largely ‘making fun of people,’ well … that’s not great.”

Editor’s Top Reads

• Yet another major company is leaning into the rise of the Make America Healthy Again movement. Lay’s Potato Chips is making some ingredient swaps — some brands will move from seed and corn oils to olive or avocado, while artificial colors will be removed from the seasoning on BBQ chips. But one major move is tweaking the brightly colored, shiny yellow Lay’s back to a more matte, paper-textured material and clarifying “made with real potatoes.” Now, Lay’s was always made with real potatoes, because that’s how you make potato chips. However, a 2021 survey revealed that 42% of consumers didn’t realize this fact, the Wall Street Journal reported. “Consumer preferences are changing faster and expectations are moving and that’s what we are focused on,” said Rachel Ferdinando, chief executive of PepsiCo’s U.S. food business. Educating customers on even seemingly self-evident facts and responding to the trends of the moment can help move products. Lay’s is rooting this update in its brand, hearkening back to founder Herman Lay’s original chip recipe. The subtle change could help people see potato chips as more natural — even if they still aren’t healthy.
• Conservative influencers are becoming major catalysts in the Portland, Oregon, protests that have led to President Donald Trump calling in the National Guard. Some are merely helping spread messaging depicting Portland as unsafe, something local officials deny. But others are becoming actively involved, either in accompanying Homeland Security Chief Kristi Noem, who has avoided traditional media and public appearances, or by becoming directly involved in conflicts with protestors, allegedly even taunting and provoking them. This all shows the massive shift in how this administration treats the media and how their most ardent supporters get their news. Even right-leaning cable outlets like FoxNews are now passe: Influencers are the new conduit and the new flashpoint.
• More bad news in the media world: People Inc. (formerly Dotdash Meredith) has announced it will lay off 6% of its staff, or 226 people, Axios reported. It’s unclear how many of those cuts will directly impact newsroom operations at the company’s 40 lifestyle-focused brands, though the company noted it would be prioritizing quickly growing areas of the business including social publishing, e-commerce and events. “We are aggressively investing in new ways to connect directly with our users, and directly with our advertisers and partners, including a number of high profile projects that we have launched or are in the pipeline,” CEO Neil Vogel wrote in a memo to employees announcing the cuts. It’s all just one more obstacle toward finding placements in traditional media — though the opportunities for social publishing or events placements could prove enticing.

Allison Carter is editorial director of PR Daily and Ragan.com. Follow her on LinkedIn.

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