While it feels like it was just yesterday, looking back at our first reports of OpenAI’s announcement of its insanely powerful AI video model Sora confirms that this release has indeed been a long time coming. It’s too long for some, perhaps, but not long enough for others though.
Yet, as we’ve spoken with different filmmakers who have been given access to try out Sora over the past months, we’ve all been nervously and eagerly awaiting for OpenAI to release Sora to the general public. And, well, that day appears to have finally come.
Sora is here to wreak havoc on the greater filmmaking world as we know it. But what does Sora actually look like? How much does it cost? And even with its advanced AI video capabilities, is it actually here to replace anything? Let’s explore what we know so far on launch day.
OpenAI’s Sora is Here
Released as part of OpenAI’s 12 Days of OpenAI, Sora is officially here. It’s not just the Sora we saw before either, OpenAI has also developed a new version of Sora—Sora Turbo— that is significantly faster than the model they previewed in February.
OpenAI is also releasing Sora as a standalone product at Sora.com to ChatGPT Plus and Pro users. Users will now be able to generate videos up to 1080p resolution, up to 20 sec long, and in widescreen, vertical or square aspect ratios. You’ll also be able to bring your own assets to extend, remix, and blend, or generate entirely new content from text.
OpenAI also shares that they’ve developed new interfaces to make it easier to prompt Sora with text, images and videos than we saw previously, including a storyboard tool to let users precisely specify inputs for each frame. There are also some Featured and Recent feeds that will be constantly updated with creations from the community.
You can read more about all the technical features for Sora here.
Will Sora Actually Change Filmmaking?
So, for all of those whose chief concern with AI is a fear of technology replacing the jobs of those of us in the film and video industry, we have some good and bad news to share here off the bat. The good news, in a way perhaps, is simply that Sora doesn’t appear to be too far ahead of any other AI video models at this point.
When first announced back in February 2024, Sora did look light years ahead of its competition. However, now in December 2024, we’re looking at a pretty crowded field of high-end AI video models from the likes of Runway, Google’s Veo, Pika Labs, and many more.
If someone wanted to use AI to replace jobs, in theory at least, they could do so today. And perhaps there are clients, producers, and agencies that do that right now. The bad news is that Sora will most likely give more ammunition to those same players if they’d like to further explore using AI instead of humans.
Still, with that being said, the filmmaking possibilities of using AI video models like Sora to possibly streamline or add to video production processes increase as well. And we look forward to seeing how filmmakers might experiment and try to embrace these technologies going forward—again, for better or for worse.
Price and Availability
Now, the biggest questions for Sora have always been about the release date and the eventual cost. And it looks like OpenAI is confirming that Sora is included in these ChatGPT plans:
ChatGPT Plus which is $20.00/month
- Up to 50 priority videos (1,000 credits)
- Up to 720p resolution and 5s duration
- Learn more
ChatGPT Pro which is $200.00/month
- Up to 500 priority videos (10,000 credits)
- Unlimited relaxed videos
- Up to 1080p resolution, 20s duration and 5 concurrent generations
- Download without watermark
- Learn more
We’ll keep you updated as to what else OpenAI has in store for Sora in the coming days and weeks as this clearly appears to the the AI video model to change the industry.
Author: Jourdan Aldredge
This article comes from No Film School and can be read on the original site.
