For a short time on Tuesday, a group of angry artists shared a tool that allows anyone to use OpenAI’s unofficially released Sora AI model, which takes text information and turns it into videos.
In an open letter titled “Dear Corporate AI Overlords,” accompanied by illustrations of figures attacking middle fingers, the artists wrote that they were given early access to Sora to test the product and become creative partners. Instead, they believe that OpenAI wants to use hundreds of unpaid AI artists like them for the purpose of “art washing” which is an exploitative business model.
“Hundreds of artists provide unpaid work with bug testing, feedback and software testing work for a company valued at $150B,” the group wrote on AI modeling platform Hugging Face. “While hundreds are contributing for free, a select few will be selected for a competition to have their films screened by Sora—providing little compensation compared to the huge PR and marketing value OpenAI receives.”
The letter was endorsed by 16 artists who say they are not opposed to the use of AI as an artistic tool—in fact, many of them embrace AI in their work—but see a need to protest against rapid access. a program seen as a public relations strategy has the opportunity to freely evaluate and criticize the tool. Any videos they created using the tool had to be approved by OpenAI before being shared, they said.
“What we don’t agree with is how this artist program is done and how the tool is being developed before it is released publicly,” the group wrote. “We’re sharing this with the world in hopes that OpenAI will become more open, more usable by artists and support the arts beyond PR stunts.”
The tool posted on Hugging Face no longer works and a note posted at the top of the post says that OpenAI has temporarily closed the Sora early access program for artists.
OpenAI teased Sora on February 15 with a web page featuring model-generated videos and a series of tweets from CEO Sam Altman, who posted videos on X modeled based on crowdsourcing. Altman called it an “amazing moment” but Sora has yet to be released for use by more than a small group of early testers, some of whom were unhappy with the way OpenAI wanted to use their work.
In their letter, the group of artists urged their peers to use open source video production tools and encouraged AI companies to “listen and provide a way to showcase true artists, with fair compensation to artists.”
Source link
