Wild and often wildly surreal videos made with the Sora 2 AI model appeared nearly immediately after OpenAI unveiled its capabilities, with clips including plenty of cute (and disturbing) ideas that might have been tried with the first Sora model or rivals like Google’s Veo, Runway, or what's on Meta's Vibes.
But there's no denying that Sora 2 brings a sharper realism to the visuals, and the synchronized sound and dialogue make the results more impressive in some ways than other video generators can match.
That they're designed for a TikTok-style feed encourages viewers to buy into their reality. But that also makes the inevitable errors more notable, and more likely to induce uneasiness, even a little nausea – even someone used to AI-generated content might find some of Sora 2's videos to be a little too deep in the uncanny valley for comfort, as some of these examples show…
Sora 2 standup
Sora 2 is insanely good at stand up comedy from r/ChatGPT
Firstly, this is a joke first told by Joan Rivers, so no points for originality here. The AI crowd does seem to enjoy the AI comedian's delivery. And the comedian seems pretty pleased with how it goes, despite his sweatiness under the synthetic lights. Without a close look at the watermark, I could believe this was only heavily edited with AI, not created with it from scratch.
Pool party?
Sora2 is too much fun (spoiler warning for those who haven't read the book) from r/SoraAi
Taking some steps into the uncanny (and potentially discomforting), this is a pretty tasteless joke. And it's either supposed to be an impersonator or it's a notable failure by the AI, not actually having holes in his feet as he claims. Still, the water splashing, and how it weighs down his robe is pretty realistic.
Cowabunga Value!s
Sora2. Im amazed from r/singularity
I remember commercials like this when I was a kid, right down to the small print spoken super fast at the end. Admittedly, the words in those commercials were spelled correctly and in a human language, the children looked less demonic, and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles didn't come off as somewhat threatening, but the degree to which it looks and sounds real is what makes the parts that are off-kilter seem especially unsettling. And that's even before you look at the ethical and legal ramifications of how easy it is to mimic copyrighted and otherwise protected intellectual property.
I don't love this Lucy
The creator of this video pulled off something amazing in terms of the length, coherence, and narrative continuity of these video clips. But, Sora 2 made some of the faces made by Lucy, Ethel, and Ricky downright terrifying. As natural as Lucy holding a smartphone looks, Ricky's newspaper flaps in some unnatural ways (and that's before considering the topics under discussion.
But all of these videos are made relatively quickly. If Sora 2’s first videos are this good, the question is what happens with so much believable video that leaves an aftertaste of the uncanny? I'm not sure I'm thrilled with a world jammed with video blurring the line between synthetic and real so effectively – we may all need to rely on our Cowabunga Value!s to figure it out (watch the video above if you haven't already).
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