A group appears to have leaked access to Sora, OpenAI's video generator, in protest of duplicity on the part of OpenAI and what it calls “artwashing.”
The group published the project on Tuesday on Hugging Face, an AI development platform that appears to be connected to OpenAI's Sora API, which is not yet publicly available. This group created a frontend that allows users to generate videos with Sora, presumably using an authentication token from an early access program.
Why I think this is real – It uses the OpenAI Sora API endpoint to generate and download a video with hardcoded request headers and cookies from the Hugging Face space preferences.
— Tibor Blaho (@btibor91) November 26, 2024
This group of frontends allows any user to generate 10-second videos at up to 1080p resolution. When TechCrunch tried it, several users on X were able to successfully upload samples, although the queue was quite long.
Try it here: https://t.co/gnnkoj0jc2
Sora seems to be an optimized version. Generate up to 1,080 10-second clips.
I suggest duplicating the space (if that works, it didn't work in my testing!).
An example: pic.twitter.com/npphRJgyrd
— Col Tregaskes (@koltregaskes) November 26, 2024
Confirmed: OpenAI Sora is really leaked https://t.co/Vh1zzsKgPT pic.twitter.com/mAN1Z4vGsN
— Chubby♨️ (@kimmonismus) November 26, 2024
So why did the group do this? They believe that OpenAI is pressuring Sora's early testers, including the red team and creative partners, to weave a positive narrative around Sora. , alleging that it has failed to fairly compensate them for their work.
“Hundreds of artists provide unpaid labor through bug testing, feedback, and experimental work. [Sora early access] $150 billion worth of programs [sic] company,” the group wrote in a post attached to the front end. “This early access program seems to be more focused on PR and advertising than creative expression and criticism.”
The group also claims that OpenAI is overly controlling and misleading about the public access of Sora-generated videos. According to them, all of Sora's creations must be approved by OpenAI before being shared, and only a small number of creators in the early access program will be selected through a contest to have films created by Sora screened. .
“We are not opposed to using AI technology as a tool for art (if we were, we probably would not have been invited to this program),” the paper wrote. “What we disagree with is how this artist program is being rolled out and how this tool is being prepared prior to general release. We believe that OpenAI is more open and artist-friendly. We are sharing this with the world in the hope that we can go beyond PR and support the arts.”
We have reached out to Hugging Face and OpenAI for comment and will update this article when we hear back.