The AI Company Pledges Greater Intellectual Property Control Following Sora 2 Generates Footage of Popular Figures

The company is promising to offer copyright holders with increased oversight regarding character generation after its recently released application, Sora 2, produced a wave of clips featuring protected characters.

The Video Generator’s Launch and Early Issues

The AI video generator, powered by AI, was rolled out recently on an exclusive basis. This tool enables individuals to create short videos from a written description. Initial assessments of the AI-generated video feed revealed protected figures from popular series such as animated series, adult cartoons, creature-collecting franchises and Rick and Morty.

Before the release of Sora 2, the company allegedly told artist representatives and studios that if they did not want their protected content copied by the video generator, they would have to opt out.

“Our team will collaborate with copyright owners to prevent character generation upon request and address removal inquiries.”

OpenAI stated that content owners can flag unauthorized use via a dedicated reporting tool, but individual artists or studios cannot have a universal exclusion.

Leadership’s Response and Upcoming Strategies

Recently, the company’s leader the chief executive said in a blog post that the company had been gathering input from the community, rights holders 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 users can opt-in to use their own image in the application, but with extra safeguards.

“We are hearing from a lot of rightsholders who are very excited for this new kind of ‘interactive fan fiction’ and think this new kind of engagement will accrue a lot of value to them, but want the ability to specify how their characters can be used (including not at all).”

Addressing Edge Cases and Monetization 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 ought not to.

Altman continued that the company would also need to generate revenue from content creation, and currently the platform was seeing people generating far greater material than anticipated per user. He suggested compensation to copyright owners who grant permission their figures to be created.

“We will need to experiment with different approaches to finalize the revenue structure, but implementation is imminent,” Altman said. “We anticipate that this novel interaction will surpass monetary gains in importance, though we aim for both aspects to be beneficial.”

He concluded by noting that there would be a high rate of change, comparable to the initial stages of ChatGPT, and there would be both successful choices and occasional errors.