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MIT Technology Review’s How To series helps you get things done.
Today, OpenAI released its video generation model Sora to the public. The announcement comes on the fifth day of the company’s “shipmas” event, a 12-day marathon of tech releases and demos. Here’s what you should know—and how you can use the video model right now.
What is Sora?
Sora is a powerful AI video generation model that can create videos from text prompts, animate images, or remix videos in new styles. OpenAI first previewed the model back in February, but today is the first time the company is releasing it for broader use.
What’s new about this release?
The core function of Sora—creating impressive videos with simple prompts—remains similar to what was previewed in February, but OpenAI worked to make the model faster and cheaper ahead of this wider release. There are a few new features, and two stand out.
One is called Storyboard. With it, you can create multiple AI-generated videos and then assemble them together on a timeline, much the way you would with conventional video editors like Adobe Premiere Pro.
The second is a feed that functions as a sort of creative gallery. Users can post their Sora-generated videos to the feed, see the prompts behind certain videos, tweak them, and generally get inspiration, OpenAI says.
How much can you do with it?
You can generate videos from text prompts, change the style of videos and change elements with a tool called Remix, and assemble multiple clips together with Storyboard. Sora also provides preset styles you can apply to your videos, like moody film noir or cardboard and papercraft, which gives a stop-motion feel. You can also trim and loop the videos that you make.
Who can use it?
To generate videos with Sora, you’ll need to subscribe to one of OpenAI’s premium plans—either ChatGPT Plus ($20 per month) or ChatGPT Pro ($200 per month). Both subscriptions include access to other OpenAI products as well. Users with ChatGPT Plus can generate videos as long as five seconds with a resolution up to 720p. This plan lets you create 50 videos per month.
Users with a ChatGPT Pro subscription can generate longer, higher-resolution videos, capped at a resolution of 1080p and a duration of 20 seconds. They can also have Sora generate up to five variations of a video at once from a single prompt, making it possible to review options faster. Pro users are limited to 500 videos per month but can also create unlimited “relaxed” videos, which are not generated in the moment but rather queued for when site traffic is low.
Both subscription levels make it possible to create videos in three aspect ratios: vertical, horizontal, and square.
If you don’t have a subscription, you’ll be limited to viewing the feed of Sora-generated videos.
OpenAI is starting its global launch of Sora today, but it will take longer to launch in “most of Europe,” the company said.
OPENAI
Where can I access it?
OpenAI has broken Sora out from ChatGPT. To access it, go to Sora.com and log in with your ChatGPT Plus or Pro account. (MIT Technology Review was unable to access the site at press time—a note on the site indicated that signups were paused because they were “currently experiencing heavy traffic.”)
How’d we get here?
A number of things have happened since OpenAI first unveiled Sora back in February. Other tech companies have also launched video generation tools, like Meta Movie Gen and Google Veo. There’s also been plenty of backlash. For example, artists who had early access to experiment with Sora leaked the tool to protest the way OpenAI has trained it on artists’ work without compensation.
What’s next?
As with any new release of a model, it remains to be seen what steps OpenAI has taken to keep Sora from being used for nefarious, illegal, or unethical purposes, like the creation of deepfakes. On the question of moderation and safety, an OpenAI employee said they “might not get it perfect on day one.”
Another looming question is how much computing capacity and energy Sora will use up every time it creates a video. Generating a video uses much more computing time, and therefore energy, than generating a typical text response in a tool like ChatGPT. The AI boom has already been an energy hog, presenting a challenge to tech companies aiming to rein in their emissions, and the wide availability of Sora and other video models like it has the potential to make that problem worse.
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.
The world’s next big environmental problem could come from space
In September, a unique chase took place in the skies above Easter Island. From a rented jet, a team of researchers captured a satellite’s last moments as it fell out of space and blazed into ash across the sky, using cameras and scientific equipment. Their hope was to gather priceless insights into the physical and chemical processes that occur when satellites burn up as they fall to Earth at the end of their missions.
This kind of study is growing more urgent. The number of satellites in the sky is rapidly rising—with a tenfold increase forecast by the end of the decade. Letting these satellites burn up in the atmosphere at the end of their lives helps keep the quantity of space junk to a minimum. But doing so deposits satellite ash in the Earth’s atmosphere. This metallic ash could potentially alter the climate, and we don’t yet know how serious the problem is likely to be. Read the full story.
—Tereza Pultarova
OpenAI’s “12 days of shipmas” tell us a lot about the AI arms race
Last week, OpenAI announced what it calls the 12 days of OpenAI, or 12 days of shipmas. On December 4, CEO Sam Altman took to X to announce that the company would be “doing 12 days of openai. each weekday, we will have a livestream with a launch or demo, some big ones and some stocking stuffers.”
The company will livestream about new products every morning for 12 business days in a row during December. It’s an impressive-sounding (and media-savvy) schedule, to be sure. But it also speaks to how tight the race between the AI bigs has become, and also how much OpenAI is scrambling to build more revenue. Read the full story.
—Mat Honan
This story originally appeared in The Debrief with Mat Honan, our weekly take on what’s really going on behind the biggest tech headlines. The story is subscriber-only so nab a subscription too, if you haven’t already! Or you can sign up to the newsletter for free to get the next edition in your inbox on Friday.
The must-reads
I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.
1 The USDA is launching a national program to test milk for bird flu
A full nine months after the current outbreak was first detected in dairy cows. (STAT)
+ The risk of a bird flu pandemic is rising. (MIT Technology Review)
2 Here’s what sets OpenAI’s new models apart
They’re shifting from predicting to reasoning, which could be a huge deal. (The Atlantic $)
+ Regardless of whether capabilities are slowing, AI’s impact is only poised to grow. (Vox)
+ It may be comforting to dismiss AI as hype—but it misses the point. (Platformer)
3 A federal appeals court has upheld the US TikTok ban
But what happens next is anyone’s guess. (WSJ $)
+ Whether TikTok is banned or not, the actions against it have had a big impact. (MIT Technology Review)
4 Top internet sleuths are sitting out the hunt for the UnitedHealthcare CEO killer
In fact, some are even criticizing people who are trying to help. (NBC)
+ Why so many Americans are at best indifferent to this particular murder. (New Yorker $)
5 Schools are attempting to stop teens self-harming before they even try
The AI tools they’re adopting could be doing far more damage than help, though. (NYT $)
6 China is building its own Starlink system
The Qianfan constellation could eventually grow to nearly 14,000 satellites. (The Economist $)
+ The end of the ISS will usher in a more commercialized future in space. (The Verge)
7 This was an exciting year for superconductors
Superconductivity—the flow of electric current with no resistance—was discovered in three new materials. (Quanta $)
8 Meet the world’s least productive programmers
It seems a small minority of disillusioned ‘ghost engineers’ do pretty much no work at all. (WP $)
9 Why people are turning their backs on dating apps
There’s a large degree of fatigue, and a feeling that they’re somehow detached from reality. (The Guardian)
10 Fake snacks are racking up millions of views on Instagram 
There’s even a word for this trend: snackfishing. (Wired $)
Quote of the day
“I think Twitter and now X is like a crack addiction for him, though. He is clearly chasing a particular hit all the time and he has ended up self-radicalising himself with the platform he has purchased.”
—A former Twitter employee in London tells The Guardian how Elon Musk has changed since he purchased the platform.
The big story
How electricity could help tackle a surprising climate villain
BOB O’CONNOR
January 2024
Cement is used to build everything from roads and buildings to dams and basement floors. But it’s also a climate threat. Cement production accounts for more than 7% of global carbon dioxide emissions—more than sectors like aviation, shipping, or landfills.
One solution to this climate catastrophe might be coursing through the pipes at Sublime Systems. The startup is developing an entirely new way to make cement. Instead of heating crushed-up rocks in lava-hot kilns, Sublime’s technology zaps them in water with electricity, kicking off chemical reactions that form the main ingredients in its cement.
But it faces huge challenges: competing with established industry players, and persuading builders to use its materials in the first place. Read the full story.
—Casey Crownhart
We can still have nice things
A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or tweet ’em at me.)
+ Who will be the Lord of Misrule in your household this Christmas?
+ People’s Wikipedia browsing data always makes for interesting reading.
+ Wait, so we’ve been mispronouncing these words all along? (Apart from espresso, c’mon)
+ The Muppet Christmas Carol might just be the greatest festive film.