OpenAI has been releasing a steady stream of videos made through its very own artificial intelligence text-to-video generator Sora.
While Sora is said to be able to create videos that are up to a minute long, the videos released publicly so far have mainly been around the 10 to 25 seconds mark. The subjects of these videos vary from historical footage, to paper airplanes in a forest, and luckily for us, some also include a bunch of cute animals.
I decided to take a look at the latter group of clips to see how far this AI video generator, that’s yet to be released to the public, has come. Here are seven of the best Sora videos featuring animals.
1. City dogs
A Samoyed and a Golden Retriever are living the big city life in this first clip. Sora created two realistic dogs that are running around a city illuminated by neon lights.
At first glance, the video looks pretty decent but after a couple of replays you’ll start to notice things like the dogs not blinking.
2. Cat on the hunt
Things got a little bit more exciting in this video which was created using a fairly detailed prompt.
The prompt was for a white and orange cat darting through a garden captured in a cinematic image with warm tones and also included details about what the cat should be doing, what lighting to use, and what the camera angle should be.
3. Wooly mammoths
Sora dialled back the clock 10,000 years to imagine what it would have been like to watch a herd of woolly mammoths approaching you.
The scene is set in a snowy meadow with snow-capped mountains looming behind the massive animals. It’s particularly interesting to see how the mammoths’ feet interact with the snow on the ground.
Unfortunately, the clip cuts right before we’re able to truly appreciate a close-up view of that whole interaction.
4. Paws that paint
It’s another dog! But this one’s eyes are more alive. Here Sora was asked to generate a Mini Aussie painting a picture of his favorite toy.
The result we get is a dog dressed in a striped t-shirt and a beret which is grasping a brush between its teeth. While the dog isn’t making any brush strokes, the textures, lighting, and movement all come beautifully together.
5. A curious chameleon
Another impressive Sora video is one featuring a chameleon resting on a branch. While the prompt asks the AI video generator to showcase the animal’s color-changing capabilities there’s not much of that going on.
Nonetheless, it still gives you the feeling that you’re watching a clip from a nature documentary and you can almost feel the chameleon’s scales.
6. Bunny rabbits
Can Sora generate videos that make us go “Awh”? Yes, yes it can. OpenAI’s text-to-video generator was given the prompt to create a cute rabbit family eating dinner in their burrow and Sora did not disappoint.
It created four rabbits happily munching on some vegetables. It looks like one of them has been generated with six legs, which we would have happily overlooked if the video was longer allowing for maximum bunny enjoyment.
7. Hybrid animals
This one’s a bit of a bonus addition, but it’s interesting to see how Sora can be used to bring our imagination to life.
In this clip done in collaboration with AI artist Don Allen Stevenson, we’re presented with the ‘giraffe flamingo’, ‘horse fly’, and the ‘fox crow’ each of which is a hybrid of two animals.
It makes for quite a nightmarish experience but Sora does manage to merge the animals together and make them move in what would be a plausible way.
What’s next?
These seven Sora videos featuring animals give us a sense of what colors, textures, and camera movements we’ll be able to play with using AI. However, you may have noticed that a crucial element in most of the videos OpenAI has released is the lack of relevant audio.
Of the ones we listed above, it’s only the video featuring the hybrid animals that matched sounds to the visuals (most likely in post-production).
While it helps us to appreciate the complexity of creating an AI video from prompt to screen, it’s also going to be interesting to see how OpenAI will go about this issue.
Release an AI video creator that can generate silent stock footage and leave the audio up to the user? Or wait until they can release a complete package? We should find out later this year.
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