With Sora, It Is Easy To Create Fake Clips

We have sees security footage of a famous tech CEO shoplifting, Ronald McDonald in a police chase, Jesus joking about "last supper vibes" in a selfie video in front of a busy dinner table. All of these fake videos were ranked among the most popular on a new TikTok-style app that further blurs the eroding line between reality and artificial intelligence-generated fantasy or falsehood.

Sora, released by ChatGPT maker OpenAI, is a social app where every second of audio and video is generated by artificial intelligence. Users can create fake clips that depict themselves or their friends in just about any scenario imaginable, with consistently high realism and a compelling soundtrack complete with voices.

OpenAI said the app is initially available only in the United States and Canada, but that access will expand.

In the 24 hours after the app’s release last 30 September, early users explored the power of OpenAI’s upgraded video-making technology and the fun to be had inserting friends into outlandish scenes, or making them sing, dance or fly.

Users also posted clips that showed how more powerful AI video tools could be used to mislead or harass, or might raise legal questions over copyright.

Fake videos that soared on Sora included realistic police body-cam footage, recreations of popular TV shows and clips that broke through protections intended to prevent unauthorized use of a person’s likeness.

Tests by The Washington Post showed Sora could create fake videos of real people dressed as Nazi generals, highly convincing phony scenes from TV shows including "South Park" and fake footage of historical figures such as John F. Kennedy.

Experts have warned for years that AI-generated video could become indistinguishable from video shot with cameras, undermining trust in footage of the real world. Sora’s combination of improved AI technology and its ability to realistically insert real people into fake clips appears to make such confusion more likely.

"The challenge with tools like Sora is it makes the problem exponentially larger because it’s so available and because it’s so good," said Ben Colman, chief executive and co-founder of Reality Defender, a company that makes software to help banks and other companies detect AI fraud and deepfakes. Just a few months ago, regular people didn’t have access to high-quality AI video generation, Colman said. "Now it’s everywhere." AI-generated content has become increasingly common - and popular - on platforms such as TikTok and YouTube over the past year. Hollywood studios are experimenting with the technology to speed up productions. The new Sora app makes OpenAI the first major tech company to attempt to build a social video platform wholly focused on fake video. Sora ranked as the third most popular download on Apple’s app store on Wednesday, despite access to the app being limited to those who have an invite code from an existing user.