Nearly three years after OpenAI kickstarted an arms race with the public debut of its hallucinatory text generator ChatGPT, the Sam Altman-run firm launched a new frenzy with the release of its Sora 2, a video app that allows users to scan their face and place themselves in hyperrealistic clips.
But major studio executives and talent agency chiefs have been more preoccupied with how easily Sora is now able to spit out regurgitated intellectual property. Prompts can generate characters and scenes from, say, Bob’s Burgers, SpongeBob SquarePants, Gravity Falls, Pokémon, Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption, as The Hollywood Reporter has detailed in using OpenAI’s latest tool.
Not only have the likenesses of the characters been featured but those characters can look and sound like the studios’ versions, raising questions about what control — if any — talent has over their likeness when users can endlessly prompt Sora 2 with manipulated versions of characters that they’re associated with.
At WME, head of digital strategy Chris Jacquemin sent a memo to agents this week saying that, in its conversations with OpenAI, the agency had alerted the tech giant that it was opting out all of its clients from the latest update of the video tool. That memo, sent Oct. 1, was issued a day after the Sept. 30 unveiling of Sora 2, which launched as an invite-only TikTok-style app encouraging sharing with friends.
By Friday, Altman had presumably heard concerns from Hollywood IP rightsholders and issued a backtrack of his own on OpenAI’s blog. “First, we will give rightsholders more granular control over generation of characters, similar to the opt-in model for likeness but with additional controls,” the OpenAI chief wrote on Oct. 3. (What “granular” means appears to be the operative word here.)
Altman and OpenAI appear to be pitching “interactive fan fiction” as a lucrative emerging space for the studios, which “think this new kind of engagement will accrue a lot of value to them, but want the ability to specify how their characters can be used (including not at all),” Altman wrote, in hyping up the potential revenue stream for Hollywood. In his walk back note, the exec struck a conciliatory approach: “we want to apply the same standard towards everyone, and let rightsholders decide how to proceed (our aim of course is to make it so compelling that many people want to).”
Whether that will result in a new round of talks with stakeholders — studios, agencies, guilds, estates and more — or spur a round of lawsuits like the legal salvos lobbed by Disney, Universal and Warner Bros. Discovery against OpenAI rival Midjourney over its IP-infringing outputs may be the next question.
The full Oct. 1 memo from WME’s digital chief Chris Jacquemin to agents is below:
Subject: OpenAI // Sora update
As mentioned in our Rollout meeting, OpenAI has now released a new version of its Sora video generator, which allows users to create videos featuring copyright material unless copyright holders actively opt out. This means studios and other IP holders will need to explicitly ask OpenAI not to include their material in the videos Sora creates. For talent, music artists, athletes, models, etc, they have moved to an opt-in position, though our clients would still have some potential exposure due to the fact that some IP rightsholders have not opted out.
There is a strong need for real protections for artists and creatives as they encounter AI models using their intellectual property, as well as their name, image and likeness. Our position is that artists should have a choice in how they show up in the world and how their likeness is used and we have notified OpenAI that all WME clients be opted out of the latest Sora AI update, regardless of whether IP rights holders have opted out IP our clients are associated with.
In addition, as you all know, WME has partnerships with both Loti and Vermillio, two companies at the forefront of providing clients with solutions to protect their identity by detecting infringements and issuing takedowns. We have negotiated a no-cost service for Loti and Vermillio available to all of our clients. For any clients not currently working with these services, we encourage you to raise this benefit so we can opt them in.
These issues will continue to arise, and we are not just looking at Sora and OpenAI, but across the tech landscape. It’s vital that we stay proactive and we plan to continue to fight for our clients’ rights and protections.
For any legal questions or concerns, please reach out to your respective BA lead or legal. For other questions or if you are interested in onboarding your clients onto Loti or Vermillio, please reach out to Chelsea Allen or Kate Lonczak.
Chris Jacquemin | WME
