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A group appears to have leaked access to Sora, OpenAI’s video generator, in protest of what they’re calling duplicity and “art washing” on OpenAI’s part.
On Tuesday, the group published a project on the AI dev platform Hugging Face seemingly connected to OpenAI’s Sora API, which isn’t yet publicly available. Using their authentication tokens — presumably from an early access program — the group created a frontend that lets users generate videos with Sora.
Why I think it’s real – this is using the OpenAI Sora API endpoint to generate and download videos with hardcoded request headers and cookies from the Hugging Face space environment config
— Tibor Blaho (@btibor91) November 26, 2024
Using the group’s frontend, any user can generate 10-second videos up to 1080p resolution. When TechCrunch tried, the queue was quite long — but several users on X managed to upload samples.
— Kol Tregaskes (@koltregaskes) November 26, 2024So why did the group do this? They claim that OpenAI is pressuring Sora’s early testers, including red teamers and creative partners, to “tell the world that Sora is a useful tool for artists” and failing to compensate them for their feedback.
“Hundreds of artists provide unpaid labor through bug testing, feedback and experimental work for the program for a $150B valued [sic] company,” the group wrote in a post attached to the frontend.
The group also claims that OpenAI is being deceptive about which Sora-generated videos make their way into the public sphere. Only a few creators in the early access program will be chosen through a competition to have their Sora-created films screened, they say, and every Sora output needs to be approved by the OpenAI team before sharing.
“This early access program appears to be less about creative expression and critique, and more about PR and advertisement,” they wrote. “We are not against the use of AI technology as a tool for the arts (if we were, we probably wouldn’t have been invited to this program). What we don’t agree with is how this artist program has been rolled out and how the tool is shaping up ahead of a possible public release. We are sharing this to the world in the hopes that OpenAI becomes more open, more artist friendly and supports the arts beyond PR stunts.”
We’ve reached out to Hugging Face and OpenAI for comment and will update this piece once we hear back.
Kyle Wiggers is a senior reporter at TechCrunch with a special interest in artificial intelligence. His writing has appeared in VentureBeat and Digital Trends, as well as a range of gadget blogs including Android Police, Android Authority, Droid-Life, and XDA-Developers. He lives in Brooklyn with his partner, a piano educator, and dabbles in piano himself. occasionally — if mostly unsuccessfully.
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