It didn’t take long for OpenAI’s new text-to-video app, Sora 2, to devolve into a tasteless deluge of AI slop.
Besides blatantly copyright-infringing videos of SpongeBob SquarePants cooking up blue crystals or entire episodes of South Park, users found that it’s never been easier to generate photorealistic AI slop videos puppeting the likenesses of deceased celebrities to mock them years or decades after their deaths.
It’s a disappointing new low, infiltrating an already heavily slop-derived online hellscape.
The technology has gotten so convincing that AI-generated clips could be construed as historical fact, tarnishing the legacy of deceased public figures. Several tools have already made it trivially easy to remove Sora 2 watermarks in videos.
The videos often have a cruel, mocking tone. Many clips show famed theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, who died in 2018, being knocked to the ground by WWE wrestlers or being punched bloody by a UFC fighter.
We’ve also come across a series of clips of Elvis Presley, who passed away in 1977, stumbling and passing gas after collapsing on stage, in an apparent mockery of his tragic final performance. The clips also show Presley being egged or dislocating his knee, leading to stunned reactions from the crowd.
Other deceased celebrities receiving the Sora 2 treatment include famed TV personality Fred “Mister Rogers” Rogers, who died in 2003, losing his temper in expletive-filled rage — a stark contrast to his famously calm and collected demeanor.
“Cut! Cut! Is it off? Are we off?” the sloppified version of Mister Rogers screams. “F***ing thing sucks, what the f*** is the matter with you, neighbor?”
Another clip shows Mister Rogers flipping off the camera, exclaiming, “Watch this!”
One video circulating on X-formerly-Twitter shows famed physician Albert Einstein, who died in 1955, discussing a pink designer handbag.
“They call it luxury,” he says in the clip. “Leather, logo, shiny buckle. They tell you it makes you important, but the cost of making it is maybe ten dollars.”
A separate video shows Australian zookeeper Steve “Crocodile Hunter” Irwin, who died in 2006, sneaking up on a street performer or jumping an old man who’s feeding pigeons, mimicking his ability to subdue dangerous wildlife.
“All suited up, briefcase in tow,” he tells the camera after bearhugging a man in a suit. “Completely unaware, what a beauty.”
Whether OpenAI will take action to rein in these distasteful and disparaging videos of deceased celebrities remains to be seen. In its safety documentation for Sora 2, the company promised to “take measures to block depictions of public figures.” However, the company told PCMag that it would “allow the generation of historical figures.”
Those representing the estates of celebrities are forced to navigate an enormous legal grey area.
“The challenge with AI is not the law,” Adam Streisand, a lawyer who has represented several celebrity estates, told NBC News. “The question is whether a non-AI judicial process that depends on human beings will ever be able to play an almost fifth-dimensional game of whack-a-mole.”
A spokesperson for the Sam Altman-led company told the broadcaster that “we believe that public figures and their families should ultimately have control over how their likeness is used.”
The ChatGPT maker implied that it’s up to the estates to stop the barrage of hurtful AI slop videos, echoing the company’s controversial initial decision to have rightsholders opt out of having their copyrighted material show up in Sora — only to soon reverse course.
“For public figures who are recently deceased, authorized representatives or owners of their estate can request that their likeness not be used in Sora cameos,” the spokesperson told NBC.
OpenAI has claimed that its “cameos” feature, which allows users to opt in to having their face and voice be depicted in AI videos by other users, gives them “full control” of their “likeness end-to-end.”
But even potentially copyright-infringing content remains rampant on the app, which could deteriorate Hollywood’s already precarious relationship with the AI industry.
Meanwhile, the friends and family of deceased public figures will have to contend with the internet using OpenAI’s tools to make a mockery of the dead.
“Please, just stop sending me AI videos of Dad,” Zelda Williams, daughter of the late Hollywood comedy icon Robin Williams, wrote on Instagram. “Stop believing I wanna see it or that I’ll understand, I don’t and I won’t.”
“I concur concerning my father,” Bernice King, Martin Luther King Jr.’s daughter, tweeted in response to Williams’ commentary. “Please stop.”
More on Sora: People Are Making Sora 2 Videos of Stephen Hawking Being Horribly Brutalized
The post People Are Using OpenAI’s Sora to Mock the Dead appeared first on Futurism.
