Sora 2 is now the most popular iOS app on the market, sitting atop the charts despite still being invite-only (albeit it’s not exactly hard to find one of the “permanent” codes out there).
It’s attracting a lot of attention not just for its hyper-real videos that many may not be able to distinguish from reality, but also for its wildly liberal take on copyright. Of all the companies infringed on here, Nintendo may be the most prominent based on what we’re seeing on Sora.
It is very confusing how Sora is handling its likeness/copyright “guard rails.” From moment one, you could not generate any images of big characters like Batman or Spider-Man or Darth Vader; the app wouldn’t let you. But in at least two categories it has thrown all that out the window: animation and video games. That ranges from making perfectly voiced Rick and Morty clips to a video of…Sam Altman grilling and eating Pikachu.
I have yet to find any video game character that Sora 2 is unable to reproduce, and scrolling through the “for you” part of the app, I am seeing countless Pokémon videos made by users with perfect representations of the monsters. This ranges from Pikachu doing ASMR into a microphone to a video of Pokémon frolicking in a field with Sam Altman turning to the camera and saying “I hope we don’t get sued.”
Nintendo is a famously litigious company, whether that’s video uploads to YouTube or unauthorized Smash Bros. tournaments. Most recently, it has turned its attention toward rival monster-catcher Palworld, forcing that game to take out allegedly patented features like summoning creatures from balls or using them as gliders.
Fans do not love this about Nintendo, but if you’re not on board with AI, you may side with it on this one. Of course, it’s not just Nintendo, given that literally every game I can think of is on here, but OpenAI has allegedly said that IP holders need to “opt-out” of having their content or visuals or apparently even voicework on the service, according to the Wall Street Journal.
We may see this already happening. I saw someone say that you can no longer make videos with Michael Jackson, for instance, but again, almost every celebrity or public figure or large scale movie or TV IP seemed restricted by default. Were companies given the option to pre-opt out of this? Why were animation and video games and Michael Jackson skipped? The inner workings of all this are very confusing, though if anyone is going to step up to the plate first to hit back on this, it may be Nintendo.
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