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The company is promising to offer copyright holders with increased oversight regarding character generation following its newly launched tool, Sora 2, produced a flood of videos depicting copyrighted characters.

The Video Generator’s Release and Early Concerns

Sora 2, driven by artificial intelligence, was rolled out last week on an invite-only basis. This tool allows users to produce short videos based on a written description. Initial assessments of the machine-created content stream showed copyrighted figures from well-loved series such as animated series, adult cartoons, Pokémon and sci-fi comedies.

Prior to launch of Sora 2, OpenAI reportedly told artist representatives and studios that if they did not want their copyrighted material replicated by the AI tool, they would need to decline.

“We’ll work with rights holders to block characters from Sora at their request and respond to takedown requests.”

The company explained that content owners can flag unauthorized use using a “copyright disputes form”, but individual artists or studios are not granted a universal exclusion.

CEO’s Reaction and Future Strategies

Recently, the company’s leader Sam Altman announced in a blog post that the organization had been gathering input from users, copyright owners and stakeholders, and would implement changes as a result.

Altman noted that rights holders would be provided more “granular control” over character generation, akin to how people can opt-in to use their own image in the application, but with “additional controls”.

“Many copyright owners have expressed enthusiasm for this innovative form of ‘interactive fan fiction’ and believe it will generate significant value, yet they desire the power to define usage terms for their characters, including complete prohibition.”

Addressing Exceptions and Revenue Models

Altman said that OpenAI would allow copyright owners to determine their approach and that there would be some “edge cases of generations” that get through the platform’s guardrails that should not.

He added that the organization would also need to generate revenue from content creation, and already the system was seeing people generating much more content than expected per user. This could mean payment to copyright owners who grant permission their figures to be generated.

“The exact model will take some trial and error to figure out, but we plan to start very soon,” Altman said. “Our hope is that the new kind of engagement is even more valuable than the revenue share, but of course we want both to be valuable.”

Altman finished by saying that there would be a high rate of evolution, similar to the early ChatGPT days, and there would be “some good decisions and some missteps”.