OpenAI has introduced a new update for its Sora AI video app, enhancing its existing video creation capabilities by adding new tools aimed at assisting users in crafting more elaborate and story-driven content. Sora, an exclusive AI video application and social platform, enables users to produce lifelike, cinematic, and anime-style AI videos featuring themselves, friends, and others, complete with synchronized speech and sound effects.
The latest update’s standout feature is character cameos, which extends Sora’s capacity to generate AI videos of real individuals. Users can now generate reusable characters from any video they upload – be it from their camera roll or existing Sora-generated material – and label them for future video projects. Each character is assigned a unique display name and handle, alongside customizable sharing settings. Users have the option to keep characters private, share them with mutual followers, or make them accessible platform-wide. OpenAI has launched this feature with a variety of initial characters, including Halloween-themed choices such as Frankenstein, Dracula, Witch, and Ghost.
Moreover, the update introduces video stitching functionality that enables users to combine multiple clips from their drafts into a cohesive sequence. Additionally, a new community leaderboards feature has been added to highlight the most remixed videos and the most frequently utilized characters and cameos.
To coincide with the update release, OpenAI has temporarily eased Sora’s invitation requirements for users in the United States, Canada, Japan, and Korea by allowing sign-ups without an invite code for a limited period. The app is now also accessible in Thailand, Taiwan, and Vietnam.
The introduction of the character cameo feature has sparked controversy for OpenAI as celebrity video platform Cameo filed a trademark infringement lawsuit against the company shortly before the update went live due to concerns over the use of ‘cameo’ in Sora’s functionalities.
Despite being invite-only and initially available in just two countries upon its recent launch late last month, the Sora app quickly surpassed one million downloads faster than ChatGPT did.