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Sora Update #1

https://blog.samaltman.com/sora-update-number-1
21•davidbarker•1h ago

Comments

minimaxir•1h ago
Yeah, Nintendo called, and faster than expected.

> People are generating much more than we expected per user, and a lot of videos are being generated for very small audiences.

What did OpenAI expect, really? They imposed no meaningful generation limits and and "very small audiences" is literally the point of an invite-only program.

Jordan-117•57m ago
Current limit seems to be 100 per rolling 24 hour period, so not unlimited but definitely huge given the compute costs.
minimaxir•52m ago
Setting the limit that high for a soft launch is bizarre. I got access to Sora and got the gist of it with like 10 generations.
techblueberry•48m ago
I don’t understand, what do they mean very small audiences, am I not supposed to make video for myself?
minimaxir•41m ago
OpenAI likely intended users to post every video they make to the public feed instead of just using the app as a free video generator. (i.e. Midjourney)

Of course, another reason that people don’t publish their generated videos is because they are bad. I may or may not be speaking from experience.

dgs_sgd•36m ago
Can confirm.. I got access to the app yesterday and I have used it exclusively for making drafts and sending them to my friends without posting.
CPLX•21m ago
Indeed. If you read between the lines that’s clearly it.

And on that note can I add how much I truly despise sentences like this:

> We are hearing from a lot of rightsholders who are very excited for this new kind of "interactive fan fiction" and think this new kind of engagement will accrue a lot of value to them, but want the ability to specify how their characters can be used (including not at all).

To me this sentence sums up a certain kind of passive aggressive California, Silicon Valley, sociopathic way of communicating with people that just makes my skin crawl. It’s sort of a conceptual cousin to concepts like banning someone from a service without even telling them or using words like “sunset” instead of “cancel” and so on.

What that sentence actually fucking means is that a lot of powerful people with valuable creative works contacted them with lawyers telling them to knock this the fuck off. Which they thought was appropriate to put in parentheses at the end as if it wasn’t the main point.

geraldalewis•1h ago
> rightsholders
roxolotl•35m ago
It’s telling to how society values copyright of different media that 4 years into people yelling about these being copyright violation machines the first time there’s been an emergency copyright update has been with video.
musicale•16m ago
"Hi, as the company that bragged about how we had ripped off Studio Ghibli, and encouraged you to make as many still frames as possible, we would now like to say that you are making too many fake Disney films and we want you to stop."
timschmidt•1m ago
Cue an open weights model from Qwen or DeepSeek with none of these limitations.
kg•1h ago
The detail that rightsholders seem to be demanding a revenue share is interesting. That sounds administratively and technologically very complex to implement and probably also just plain expensive to implement.
minimaxir•58m ago
Sam says Sora 2 has to make money but there is no revenue model that can feasibly offset a $4-5 compute cost per video.
nojs•53m ago
Where did you get that figure from?
minimaxir•50m ago
It’s more a ballpark since exact numbers vary and OpenAI could be employing shenanigans to cut costs, but in comparison, Veo 3 which has similar quality 720p video costs $0.40/second for the user, and Sora’s videos are 10 seconds each. Although Veo 3 could cost more or less to Google than what is charged to the user.

I suspect OpenAI’s costs to be higher if anything since Google’s infra is more cost-efficient.

nvr219•49m ago
It was revealed to them in a dream.
dwohnitmok•8m ago
With some back of the napkin math, I am pretty sure you're off by at least two orders of magnitude, conceivably 4. I think 2 cents per video is an upper limit.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45434298

Generally speaking, API costs that the consumer sees are way higher than compute costs that the provider pays.

EDIT: Upper limit on pure on-going compute cost. If you factor in chip capital costs as another commentator on the other thread pointed out, you might add another order of magnitude.

rr808•58m ago
That is my reminder to generate more AI slop to burn through all that VC cash.
rhetocj23•54m ago
Someone I know uses chatgpt a lot. Not because they find it incredibly valuable. But because they want to stick it to the VC's funding OAI and increase their costs with no revenue.

So this is why you have to be careful about usage numbers. The only true meaningful number is about those who are contributing towards revenue. Without that OAI is just a giant money sink.

MountDoom•16m ago
I suspect this has the opposite effect. More daily users == higher valuation, so more profit if the VCs decide to sell. There's no pressure on OpenAI to become profitable yet.
jameslk•35m ago
Viacom-suing-YouTube-after-it-used-all-its-IP-as-a-growth-hack vibes
piskov•30m ago
Broke: cure cancer, new physics, agi, take your jobs, what have you. Please give us a trillion.

Woke: AI slop tictoc to waste millions of human-hours.

tkamado•17m ago
The OpenAI dream: replace your job with AI, replace your free time with AI slop?
CompoundEyes•15m ago
I don't have access but it seems you can impose a friend into a video? Are we not rightsholders to our own likeness? It seems like a person should be able to block a video someone shares without their consent or earn revenue then if their likeness is used.
minimaxir•13m ago
You have to explicitly opt into sharing your likeness with permission controls.

> person should be able to block a video someone shares without their consent

That is already implemented.

crimsoneer•7m ago
So that sounds like they "released" this fully aware it would generate loads of hype, but never ever be legally feasible to release at scale, so we can expect some heavily cut down version to eventually become publicly released?

Free Sora Generator – No Pay and No Credit Card and Need Login

https://FreeSoraGenerator.com
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