Creative artists stick it to ‘Corporate AI Overlords’ by leaking OpenAI’s Sora

Dozens of creatives – who say they’re sick of being 'unpaid puppets’ taken advantage of by billion-dollar AI companies – decided to stick it to the proverbial ‘man’ by leaking OpenAI’s text-to-video AI model Sora, along with an open letter to the public explaining why.

“DEAR CORPORATE OVERLORDS …“ARTISTS ARE NOT YOUR UNPAID R&D,” the open letter minces no words right out of the gate.

Over a dozen artists, who say they have been commandeered by OpenAI to “art-wash” the AI video generator, apparently published some sort of project connected to a working API for Sora on Tuesday morning, according to TechCrunch, who first reported on the revolt as it happened.

Posting the letter on Hugging Face (the AI experimental platform for machine-learning developers and testers), the artists are accusing OpenAI of luring them into agreeing to be “early testers, red teamers, and creative partners” for the company.

But instead, the artists say they’re being “exploited” by the Sam Altman-run start-up with the unspoken expectation of participating in an unpaid gorilla marketing campaign and championing the Sora tool for free.

“We are not your: free bug testers, PR puppets, training data, validation tokens,” the artists wrote in highlighted text, punctuated on either end by two skull emojis.

“Hundreds of artists provide unpaid labor through bug testing, feedback, and experimental work for the program for a $150B valued company," they wrote.

The 'program' being referred to is the apparent offer from OpenAI for the artists to contribute creatively their feedback and expertise about Sora – all for free – before a release to the public, which has not been set.

The prize? A lucky few will be chosen out of 300 artists to have their “Sora-created films screened for minimal compensation” – a drop in the bucket compared to the “substantial PR and marketing value OpenAI receives,” the artists argue.

“Denormalize billion-dollar brands exploiting artists for unpaid R&D and PR [research and development and public relations],” they said.

“We are sharing this to the world in the hopes that OpenAI becomes more open, more artist-friendly, and supports the arts beyond PR stunts,” the letter read.

By lunchtime, access to the project was revoked, assumingly taken away by the ChatGPT-maker. But not before Hugging Face users were able to generate dozens of AI-videos using the Sora-like working interface.

So far the open letter has just over 180 signatures, but we can assume that number will rise as word continues to get out about the so-called corporate sabotage.

The artists say everyone should have “free and unlimited access” to experiment with the tool.

Sora is a large-scale AI model that transforms a user’s text prompt into 60 seconds of high-fidelity video. The service can generate videos from text prompts and pre-existing images or videos. OpenAI previewed the AI model on February 15, 2024.