OpenAI Reveals Sora, a Tool to Make Instant Videos from Written Prompts 

The OpenAI logo is seen on a mobile phone in front of a computer screen displaying output from ChatGPT, March 21, 2023, in Boston. (AP)
The OpenAI logo is seen on a mobile phone in front of a computer screen displaying output from ChatGPT, March 21, 2023, in Boston. (AP)
TT

OpenAI Reveals Sora, a Tool to Make Instant Videos from Written Prompts 

The OpenAI logo is seen on a mobile phone in front of a computer screen displaying output from ChatGPT, March 21, 2023, in Boston. (AP)
The OpenAI logo is seen on a mobile phone in front of a computer screen displaying output from ChatGPT, March 21, 2023, in Boston. (AP)

The maker of ChatGPT on Thursday unveiled its next leap into generative artificial intelligence with a tool that instantly makes short videos in response to written commands.

San Francisco-based OpenAI’s new text-to-video generator, called Sora, isn’t the first of its kind. Google, Meta and the startup Runway ML are among the other companies to have demonstrated similar technology.

But the high quality of videos displayed by OpenAI — some after CEO Sam Altman asked social media users to send in ideas for written prompts — astounded observers while also raising fears about the ethical and societal implications.

“An instructional cooking session for homemade gnocchi hosted by a grandmother social media influencer set in a rustic Tuscan country kitchen with cinematic lighting,” was a prompt suggested on X by a freelance photographer from New Hampshire. Altman responded a short time later with a realistic video that depicted what the prompt described.

The tool isn’t yet publicly available and OpenAI has revealed limited information about how it was built. The company, which has been sued by some authors and The New York Times over its use of copyrighted works of writing to train ChatGPT, also hasn’t disclosed what imagery and video sources were used to train Sora. (OpenAI pays an undisclosed fee to The Associated Press to license its text news archive).

OpenAI said in a blog post that it’s engaging with artists, policymakers and others before releasing the new tool to the public.

“We are working with red teamers  —  domain experts in areas like misinformation, hateful content, and bias  —  who will be adversarially testing the model,” the company said. “We’re also building tools to help detect misleading content such as a detection classifier that can tell when a video was generated by Sora.”



Ministry of Economy and Planning Launches Beta Version of Data Saudi Mobile Application

Ministry of Economy and Planning Launches Beta Version of Data Saudi Mobile Application
TT

Ministry of Economy and Planning Launches Beta Version of Data Saudi Mobile Application

Ministry of Economy and Planning Launches Beta Version of Data Saudi Mobile Application

The Ministry of Economy and Planning launched on Wednesday the beta version of the Data Saudi mobile application, a comprehensive online platform that provides access to key economic and social data about the Kingdom.
According to a ministry statement, the application displays data from "trusted local and global sources, providing users with a better understanding of the economic landscape in Saudi Arabia, by utilizing interactive visualization techniques".
The application facilitates access to data directly on the users’ mobile devices, allowing them to browse all published economic, social, and sectoral data.
The application also enables access to the most important national and regional economic and social indicators, and data about the Kingdom’s international economic interactions with more than 180 countries.
The ministry said it will work on further developing the application in the near future by expanding data coverage to encompass diverse economic sectors. It will also strive to incorporate more advanced and interactive visualization techniques.
Those interested in experiencing the application can download it from the App Store and Google Play.