Sam Altman says that Sora adds “Granular” copyright control

Openai may be reversing its course on how to approach copyright and intellectual property with its new video app Sora.

Before Sora’s launch this week, the Wall Street Journal reported that Openai had told Hollywood Studios and its agents that they should explicitly opt out if they don’t want their IP to be included in SORA-generated videos.

Despite being an invitation only, the app quickly rose to the top of the app store chart. The most distinctive feature of Sora may be “cameo.” In this case, users can upload biometric data and see the digital portrait featured in the video generated by AI.

At the same time, users seem happy to downplay copyright laws by creating videos with characters owned by popular studios. In some cases, these characters even criticize the company’s approach to copyright in a video in which Pikachu and Spongebob interact with Openai CEO Sam Altman’s deepfake.

In a blog post published Friday, Altman said the company is already planning two changes to SORA. First, he told the copyright holder, “Like the likeness generative model, it provides more control over character generation, but has additional control.”

The keyword here appears to be “opt-in.” This suggests that OpenAI will stop users from creating videos using copyrighted characters unless Studio or others actually grant SORA permission.

“We’ve heard from many right-handed sholders who are very excited about this new kind of ‘interactive fanfiction’ and think that this new kind of engagement will have a lot of value for them, but we want the ability to specify (and include) how the characters are used,” says Altman.

Even with this new approach, Altman acknowledged that there are likely “some cases of generational edge cases to overcome.”

The second change he mentioned is an unspecified form of video monetization. The company previously appears to have detailed the idea by acknowledging that its only plan for monetization is to charge users to create additional videos during periods of high demand, and Altman’s blog post “will need to make some kind of money to generate video.” He also suggests that revenue can be shared with the right sholders.

“Our hope is that a new kind of engagement is even more valuable than revenue share, but of course we want both to be worth it.”