Is OpenAI's Sora Video Generator Any Good?
Analyzing Sora's leaked videos and how this video generator can impact different industries.
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This week many AI videos generated with OpenAI's Sora have been leaked to the public.
Sora is a video generator tool introduced by OpenAI early this year and was only available to a few early testers. A group of artists with access to Sora gave unlimited access to it for others to try (here is why they did it). After 3 hours, OpenAI shut down Sora's early access temporarily for all artists. However, many videos were leaked on X and, today, we’re going to review some of the best AI videos I found and analyze how advanced video generation tools have become.
I did this analysis with Diana who runs a Substack dedicated to AI art. Recently, she wrote a step-by-step article on how she created an entire video with an AI tool called InVideo. Check it out after reading this Sora review!
Let’s start with a Sora video by el.cine that blew up my mind the first time I watched it.
a cat chasing a mouse.
The details and consistency in the cat’s body every time it jumps are just amazing. The movements are also very fluid and smooth. I have to say, though, that sometimes the eyes of the cat seem a bit lost and don’t always follow the position of the mouse. However, this and other minor details are noticeable when watching the video multiple times.
As someone who has created AI videos herself, Diana finds the level of detail in this video stunning—textures, lighting, and even the movements appear completely natural to her.
a golden retriever chasing a cat in snowy germany
At this point, it may seem that I’m a pet lover. That’s true! With that being said, the best Sora leaked videos I found on X are this kind.
The realism of this second video is even more impressive than the first. If no one had told me this was an AI-generated video, I’d say that’s a real dog chasing a cat in snowy Germany. I watched the clip many times and simply can’t see anything that exposes the video as AI-generated. Diana agrees with me on how realistic the video looks. The only flaw she noticed was the missing hind leg of the dog as it jumps out from under the tree. But even that took her a few replays to catch. If you find any other detail that seems off, let us know in the comments.
Enough about pets. Let’s see how people look in Sora’s videos (and why they aren’t as good as the previous videos).
First, we have a girl walking in the city at night (video created by Haider)
At first sight, I was amazed by the details generated in the girl and the smoothness of her movements but I didn’t have to watch many times to realize an issue that AI art tools have in common: the fingers!! If you stop the clip, you’ll see that in some frames it’s not clear how many fingers the girl has. Sometimes it looks like she has 4 fingers and other times 6!
Diana was amazed by this Sora video and thinks that this might impact the modeling industry. With this and other AI tools, you’d just need to specify the type of person, clothing, movements, and location to generate a TV commercial or ad. No more time and money spent on hiring models—just someone skilled in generating AI videos. A few weeks ago, Diana reviewed a Photoshop AI feature that lets swap clothes in photos with a few clicks. She thinks that, maybe soon, we’ll be able to simply upload clothing images to Sora, similar to Photoshop, to generate more customized AI videos.
Here’s another video with AI-generated people that looks good but has some flaws.
Did you notice? The way some men in black run isn’t fluid. There are some little pauses that make them look like they are floating or doing little jumps.
Among the leaked videos on X, I found AI-generated gameplays could be a good niche for Sora. First, we have this video in a third-person POV where a character walks toward a portal. To me, it looks identical to what I see in video games.
Then there’s this Minecraft gameplay video in first-person POV. I’m not a big Minecraft fan, but those blocks look to me like they’re from the real Minecraft.
Today we’ve seen how much Sora has progressed since its announcement early this year. In the videos, we saw that human details like the number of fingers and the smoothness of the video might indicate whether we’re watching an AI-generated video or not. Fewer flaws were found in AI videos featuring animals and AI video gameplays.
For more about AI video generators, check out Diana’s step-by-step article on how to create an entire video using Sora’s competitor, InVideo.