The Download: impressive new AI capabilities

OpenAI has built a striking new generative video model called Sora that can take a short text description and turn it into a detailed, high-definition film clip up to a minute long. Based on four sample videos that OpenAI shared with MIT Technology Review, the firm has pushed the envelope of what's possible with text-to-video generation (a hot new research direction that we flagged as a trend to watch in 2024). It's hard to know exactly how impressive a step this is until we get more information from OpenAI--and we may have a wait on our hands. The company has no plans to release it to the public currently, though it does hope to in future. For now, mindful of the potential for misuse, OpenAI will be doing extensive safety testing.