OpenAI suspended access to its highly anticipated text-to-video generation model, Sora, after a group of artists protesting the company’s exploitation of their labor.
The artists, who have leaked the Sora were part of the early testing program of the AI model. They alleges the company used them to gain public relations and used their labor without paying.
The controversy arises from a beta testing program that OpenAI did for hundreds of artists, letting them have free access to the Sora to test features on it. Participation was voluntary; yet, some artists claimed they are PR puppets and had less compensation for their contributions, despite the company being worth $150 billion.
The group, comprising 20 artists, shared access to Sora on a public platform, allowing users to generate AI-powered videos for a brief three-hour period before OpenAI shut it down.
In an open letter posted on Hugging Face, the group criticized the company, stating:
“We are not your free bug testers, PR puppets, training data, [or] validation tokens. We are sharing this to the world in the hopes that OpenAI becomes more open, more artist-friendly, and supports the arts beyond PR stunts.”
They claim that the openness of OpenAI in requesting content and its failure to provide enough support for artists is exploitative, besides which the pay was peanuts against the PR value generated through their participation.
OpenAI, however, responded to this, claiming that participation was purely voluntary and that the company had given grants and other kinds of support to artists.
Niko Felix, an OpenAI spokesperson, said, “Hundreds of artists in our alpha have shaped Sora’s development, helping prioritize new features and safeguards. Participation is voluntary, with no obligation to provide feedback or use the tool. We’ve been excited to offer these artists free access and will continue supporting them through grants, events, and other programs.”
According to a report by The Verge, OpenAI has temporarily suspended all user access to Sora as it investigates the matter. The company has not verified the authenticity of the leaked tool but maintained that Sora is still in a research phase.
OpenAI launched Sora in February 2024 as the world’s first text-to-video AI, generating short videos of a minute in duration and quality. The tool was initially expected to launch at the end of the year, but the release has been pushed back by OpenAI on account of safety, scaling, and ethical concerns.
Former CTO Mira Murati had mentioned last year that Sora’s release would happen only when they were sure of addressing election interference and content misuse. By the time November rolled around, nothing was confirmed about the timeline on Sora’s availability into the public.
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