What exactly is OpenAI’s Sora? What’s so special about it?

On February 15, 2024, ChatGPT's parent company OpenAI launched its latest video generation model, Sora, which sparked heated discussions around the world. OpenAI officially described Sora as being able to generate up to one minute of high-definition videos based on a user's sentence. These videos are very realistic and look like real-life footage, with the smoothness and stability of the videos being above average.

What exactly is Sora?
Sora uses a diffusion transformer architecture, a deep learning-based model that gradually transforms random noise into meaningful image or video content. Sora is able to generate complex scenes with multiple characters, specific types of motion, and accurate details of the subject and background. The model not only understands what the user asks for in the prompt, but also understands how these things exist in the physical world.

Unlike AI video tools such as Runway Gen 2 and Pika, which are still trying to break through the continuity of a few seconds, Sora launched by OpenAI has reached an epic record. Sora has evolved to the point where it can directly generate highly realistic videos through text descriptions.

While other AI video tools are still at the stage of just learning to walk, Sora can already graduate and run and jump.

Compared with AI video generation tools, Sora is special in that:
Ability to generate complex videos up to 1 minute in length with multiple characters, specific types of actions, and themed backgrounds.

Multiple shots can be created in a single generated video, simulating complex camera moves while accurately maintaining characters and visual style.

Most importantly, it not only understands what the user is asking for in the prompt, but also understands how these things exist in the real world on its own.

To put it simply, Sora's functions include "video generated from text, video generated from pictures, and extended original video", with a maximum length of 60 seconds. The video is higher definition, more realistic in details, and richer in expression.

At present, 48 video demos have been updated on the official website. In these demos, Sora can not only accurately present details, but also understand the existence of objects in the physical world and generate characters with rich emotions. The model can also generate videos based on prompts, still images, and even fill in missing frames in existing videos.

We can look at the example on OpenAI's official website:

1. Several huge woolly mammoths approached on the snowy grassland

2. A flower grows on the windowsill of a suburban house

3. The camera is facing the colorful buildings of Burano Island, Italy. A cute Dalmatian dog looks out through the window of a first-floor building. Many people walk and ride bicycles along the canal street in front of the building.

Look at these AI-generated videos, which are suitable for blockbuster advertisements or even movies. Many people have been amazed that the launch of Sora will directly have a huge impact on visual arts, filmmaking, education, entertainment and other fields.

Sora's applications in different fields:
Whether it is education and teaching, product demonstration or content marketing, Sora can provide users with convenient and efficient video creation solutions. Sora's powerful functions can help users save time and resources and achieve high-quality video creation.

Used in the field of education and teaching, it helps teachers create vivid and interesting teaching videos.

Used for product demonstrations to help companies showcase product functions and features.

Used in content marketing to help brands create eye-catching advertising videos.

"Sora will have a greater impact on promotional films and commercials." "Movies also have complex factors such as scripts, plots, and lines, and the impact may come faster in the advertising and promotional film industries. If the prompt words can be detailed to the storyboard, then AI will not only help directors draw storyboards and visual reference pictures, but can also directly make more efficient dynamic storyboard previews, or when the technology is more mature, it can be directly used to make film and television works."

Perhaps the impact on the film and television industry may still require some technical growth time, but for major short video platforms at home and abroad such as Youtube and TikTok, this is definitely a magic weapon that leads to the creative ecology. First of all, it greatly reduces the cost of making videos. You only need to enter a sentence to generate a video with the texture of a blockbuster. Secondly, it may improve the picture quality of the video community and make the content more diversified.

How to get a Sora account? According to the information revealed by users who have participated in the Sora internal beta, obtaining a Sora account still requires a US IP, a US credit card, a non-host IP address, etc. Although Sora is still in the internal beta stage, based on the current technical completion status and topic discussion, I believe that it will be open for public beta soon. If you want to use Sora as soon as possible, you can prepare the registration information in advance to seize the opportunity.