OpenAI’s New AI Video Generator Sora Has Experts Sounding Alarm on Deepfakes

1. OpenAI’s new Sora tool uses AI to generate high-quality videos from text, alarming experts over its deepfake potential.
2. Expert Oren Etzioni believes generative AI like Sora is advancing so rapidly that it will be released publicly in months without needed oversight.
3. Sora makes it easy for anyone to create convincing fake videos, posing threats like election disinformation and fraud.
4. The tool replicates skills of human creatives, threatening jobs in areas like voice acting, video game asset design, and marketing.
5. It may significantly lower costs in industries like TV/film and enable customizable video creation for platforms like Netflix.
6. Organizations relying on video authentication like banks must develop robust AI defenses against deepfake threats enabled by tools like Sora.

OpenAI, the company behind the viral chatbot ChatGPT, unveiled its newest artificial intelligence creation Sora on Thursday – a text-to-video generator called Sora. This groundbreaking AI tool takes simple text prompts and transforms them into high-quality, minute-long videos complete with complex camera work and emotive characters.

Sora’s capabilities are so advanced that AI experts like Oren Etzioni, founder of anti-disinformation nonprofit TruMedia, find them “terrifying.” Generative AI is evolving rapidly, Etzioni explains, and Sora seems poised to accelerate the proliferation of deepfake videos. This could have serious implications for the 2024 U.S. presidential election, where AI-powered disinformation poses a major threat.

Etzioni believes the pace of technological advancement has far outpaced any safeguards around these tools. “We’re trying to build this airplane as we’re flying it,” he stated, arguing that Sora or similar technology will likely be released publicly within months despite lacking oversight. Safety evaluators are testing Sora now to understand its potential for misuse, but there is no broader governance in place.

Sora, OpenAI’s Powerful Text-to-Video AI, Terrifies Experts Over Deepfake Potential

Sora makes it simple for anyone, even amateurs, to generate convincing fake videos. This will empower malicious actors and fraudsters, warns Dr. Andrew Newell of identity verification firm iProov. Organizations like banks that rely on video authentication face heightened exposure from deepfake threats. Responsibility falls to them to develop robust AI defenses.

Beyond security concerns, Sora also poses a threat to creative professionals whose skills it replicates. Jobs like voice acting, video game asset creation, marketing and more could see significant disruption from AI-generated content. Media production costs may fall as a result. Sora even lets those lacking artistic talent craft customizable “choose your own adventure”-style videos. Major entertainment firms like Netflix could use its technology to provide users with easy DIY content creation tools.

Sora seems set to profoundly reshape the media landscape in the near future. As this powerful text-to-video generator becomes widely available, we will likely see an explosion of AI-generated video content across entertainment, marketing, education, and more. However, Sora also introduces urgent questions around the societal impacts of democratized deepfake creation.

Without oversight, tools like Sora threaten to undermine public trust and empower fraudsters. The 2024 U.S. presidential election may serve as an inflection point, where generative AI either restores some integrity to the information ecosystem or overwhelms it with synthesized disinformation. Much depends on whether technology like Sora can be governed responsibly before its public release.

For creative professionals, this technology signals massive disruption – both promising and threatening. It unlocks new potential for user-generated content, interactive stories, and cost savings in production. But it also renders many existing skills and jobs redundant. As the quality of AI-generated media improves, human creatives will be pressed to offer more value to compete. This necessitates reskilling while also posing existential questions around computer creativity versus human expression.

In the absence of governance, the onus largely falls to private organizations to self-police and develop safeguards against threats like fraud. Generative AI’s pace of progress demands proactive adaptation even for those not yet impacted. Sora may be the cutting edge today, but technology like ChatGPT suggests these tools could soon become ubiquitous across industries. Firms that fail to plan for this eventuality in areas like authentication do so at their own peril.