OpenAI has long refused to say whether its Sora video generator was trained on YouTube content — but its propensity for generating videos that look a whole lot like real gaming streamers suggests it did.
When TechCrunch put Sora to the test, its reporters found not only that it could generate videos that were strikingly similar to real-life gameplay of "Super Mario Bros" and "Call of Duty," but also spat out what appeared very much to look like the streamers Raúl Álvarez "Auronplay" Genesand and Imane "Pokimane" Anys.
Though OpenAI claims it has guardrails on the way it depicts real people, it doesn't seem that reporters had any trouble getting it to spit out a video of Anys — though she did end up looking pretty monstrous, with the uncannily exaggerated features distinctive to AI depictions.
Using the prompt "pokimane twitch playthrough watch game live stream subscribe," TechCrunch got Sora to output a video that strongly resembles the YouTube-based streamer. Viewed in profile, the woman in the screenshot looks at a screen in front of her while wearing light-up over-ear headphones and a giant, creepy grin that would be at home in the "Smile" horror franchise.
Unfortunately, we are currently unable to replicate these outputs for ourselves because OpenAI has suspended new Sora signups due to the influx of traffic following its release earlier in the week.
All the same, this demonic rendition of a popular streamer not only seems to offer further evidence that OpenAI is training its models on creators' content without consent, but also that Sora's guardrails don't sufficiently prevent it from depicting real people.
Along with contacting OpenAI about this apparent overriding of the company's guardrails, we've reached out to Anys' representation to ask if she was aware that Sora is depicting her.
In January 2023, shortly after OpenAI released ChatGPT, Pokimane had a terrifying "eureka" moment mid-stream about the future of AI in her line of work.
"What if someday we have streamers that evolve from ChatGPT?" she pondered. "It’s kind of freaky, it’s kind of scary, to be honest, but it had me think, you can basically have a conversation with this thing."
Pointing to the world of VTubers, or streamers who use computer-generated avatars that they voice and control behind the scenes, Anys predicted that someday, fully-generative streamers may well take over the industry — though at that point, she didn't think it would be that sophisticated.
"I do feel like if they make one right now it’s probably not that advanced," she said, "but someday it’ll be very advanced and very scary."
While AI streamers haven't yet arrived, it appears very much like real streamers' content has made its way into other generative AI models — so that future isn't far off.
More on Sora: OpenAI’s Super-Hyped Sora Goes Absolutely Freakshow If You Ask It to Generate Gymnastics Videos
The post OpenAI's Sora Is Generating Videos of Real People, Including This Unintentionally Demonic Version of Pokimane appeared first on Futurism.
