ChatGPT-parent OpenAI’s innovative text-to-video tool, Sora, has been used to produce a brand film for Toys “R” Us, indicating a potential game-changer for small studios and independent content creators.
What Happened: Toys “R” Us launched “the first-ever brand film using Microsoft Corp.-backed OpenAI’s new text-to-video tool, Sora.” The video debuted at the 2024 Cannes Lions Festival in France last week.
OpenAI’s Sora, which garnered interest in February for its lifelike videos generated by AI, has been introduced to Hollywood by OpenAI. However, the first to publicly embrace the technology is brand management company WHP Global, the current licensee of the Toys “R” Us brand.
The video was not entirely AI-generated. Creative agency Native Foreign had a team of approximately a dozen people working on the video and applied “corrective VFX” on top, according to director Nik Kleverov. Sora “got us about 80-85% of the way there,” he stated, reported The Verge.
Contrary to some headlines declaring this as the first commercial produced with OpenAI’s Sora, the press release does not imply it will be broadcast anywhere other than toysrus.com.
“OpenAI’s Sora enabled Toys”R” Us Studios and Native Foreign to bring a concept to reality in just a few weeks, condensing hundreds of iterative shots down to a couple dozen,” the company stated in a press release. “The brand film was almost entirely created with Sora, with some corrective VFX and an original music score composed by Aaron Marsh of famed indie rock band Copeland.”
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Why It Matters: OpenAI’s Sora has been making waves since its introduction. The tool can generate high-quality videos from text prompts, leading to concerns about potential job obsolescence in the video production industry.
In March 2024, OpenAI unveiled the first third-party videos created using Sora. These videos, including a unique nature documentary and a narrative about a man with a balloon head, sparked both admiration and controversy.
In the same month, OpenAI CTO Mira Murati expressed uncertainty about whether YouTube videos were used to train their AI model. Her statement opened doors for tons of criticism and speculation that OpenAI might have leveraged publicly available videos to train the Sora AI.
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Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of Benzinga Neuro and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors.
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