Free AI Video Generators Are Nearing a Crucial Tipping Point

You may have noticed some impressive video memes made with AI in recent weeks. Harry Potter reimagined as a Balenciaga commercial and nightmarish footage of Will Smith eating spaghetti both recently went viral. They highlight how quickly AI's ability to create video is advancing, as well as how problematic some uses of the technology may be. These videos remind me of the moment AI image-making tools became widespread last year, when programs like Craiyon (formerly known as DALL-E Mini) let anyone conjure up recognizable, if crude and often surreal, images, such as surveillance footage of babies robbing a gas station, Darth Vadar courtroom sketches, and Elon Musk eating crayons. Craiyon was an open source knockoff of the then carefully restricted DALL-E 2 image generator from OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT. The tool was the first to show AI's ability to take a text prompt and turn it into what looked like real photos and human-drawn illustrations.