Sora: Creating video from text

Going back generations, my grandparents' lives were virtually identical to my great grandparents'. My parents grew up with radio, but they were adults by the time TV changed their world. All three generations got the bulk of their information from books and newsprint.

I grew up together with computers. I remember riding that exponential wave of tech like a surfer. From Commodore 64 to a laptop with 64GB of memory, a million-to-one ratio. Tetris to Doom Eternal. Dialup modem to gigabit... in a mobile device that fits in my pocket.

All of this took decades, but now changes like this happen in months.

I keep thinking that "this tech will change my kid's childhood", but what "this" is, is already outdated and being replaced in a blink of an eye, and he hasn't even reached that point yet where he'd notice!

When image generators were first released... what... a year ago... I thought: Wow! One day, when my kid is a little older, I'll be able to use this to create illustrations for stories we make up as we go along! Won't that be great!

I still haven't gotten around to that yet, he's still too young to appreciate that, and anyway, with this Sora I'll be able to create video instead by the time he's old enough!

I keep trying to imagine what his life will be like when he grows up to be a teenager, but realistically I'm having a hard time predicting what will already be outdated by the time he's four.

With AI video generation you could produce multiple videos per day, each one customized to be highly targeted for a local market. Actors can be generated to represent a local minority that is villainized by politicians and the clothing and set customized for the locale.

Then you can automate posting it all over social media with fake AI generated discussions calling for a revolution. Even if the video gets flagged as fake, you can upload a thousand more. As a bonus, add comments along the lines of "of course THEY want you to think this is fake! Don't be fooled!" in order to appeal to the paranoid lunatics who are most likely to get the ball rolling.

In conclusion, I believe this is a solid startup idea. Thank you all for coming.

Phase 1 (we are here now): While generative AI is not good enough to directly produce parts of the final product, it can already be used to quickly prototype styles, stories, designs, moods, etc. A good chunk of the unnamed behind-the-scenes-people will loose their job.

Phase 2: While generative AI is still expensive, the output quality is sufficient to directly produce parts of / the entire final product. Big production outlets will use it to produce AAA titles and blockbusters. Even actors, directors and other high publicity positions will be replaced.

Phase 3: The production cost will sink further until it becomes attainable by smaller studios and indie productions. The already fierce markets will be completely flooded with more and more quantity over quality. Advertisement will not be pre-produced and cut into videos anymore but become very subtle product placements, impossible for ad-blockers to strip from the product.

Phase 4: Once the production cost falls below the price of one copy of the product, we will get completely customized entertainment products tailored to our personal taste. Online communities will emerge which craft skeletons / templates which then are filled out by the personal parameter sets of the consumers. That way you can still share the experience with friends even though everybody experiences a different variation.

Phase 5: As consumers do not hit any production limits any more (e.g. binge watch their favorite series ad infinitum) and the product becomes optimized to be maximally addictive by measuring their reaction to it, it will become impossible for most human beings to resist. The entertainment mania will reach its peak and social isolation, health issues and economic factors will bring down the human reproduction rate to basically zero.

Phase 6: Human civilization collapsed within one or two generations and the only survivors will be extremely technology-adverse people by selection. AGI might have happened in the meantime but did not have the time to gracefully take over and remodel the human infrastructure to become self sufficient. Instead a strict religion will rule the lands and the dark ages begin anew.

Note that none of this is new, it is just the continuation and intensification of already existing trends. This is also not AGI doomerism as it does not involve a malicious AGI gone rouge or anything like that. It is simply what happens when human nature meets powerful technology.

TLDR: While I love the technology I can only see very negative long-term outcomes from this.