If you were asked to visualise a stereotypical British man, what would you think of? According to AI, the answer is an overweight man wearing a football shirt. Instagram account @reimagineuk asked AI to create videos of the most stereotypical men around the world - with hilarious results. While the British man looks casual in his football shirt, men from other countries are depicted with fancier outfits. The stereotypical man from Portugal sports a white shirt and a waistcoat, while the man from Nigeria can be seen wearing a bright orange suit.

Sora is a powerful AI video generation model that can create videos from text prompts, animate images, or remix videos in new styles. OpenAI first previewed the model back in February, but today is the first time the company is releasing it for broader use. The core function of Sora--creating impressive videos with simple prompts--remains similar to what was previewed in February, but OpenAI worked to make the model faster and cheaper ahead of this wider release. There are a few new features, and two stand out. With it, you can create multiple AI-generated videos and then assemble them together on a timeline, much the way you would with conventional video editors like Adobe Premiere Pro.

OpenAI revealed a tool on Thursday that can generate videos from text prompts. The new model, nicknamed Sora after the Japanese word for "sky", can produce realistic footage up to a minute long that adheres to a user's instructions on both subject matter and style. According to a company blogpost, the model is also able to create a video based on a still image or extend existing footage with new material. "We're teaching AI to understand and simulate the physical world in motion, with the goal of training models that help people solve problems that require real-world interaction," the blogpost reads. One video included among several initial examples from the company was based on the prompt: "A movie trailer featuring the adventures of the 30-year-old space man wearing a red wool knitted motorcycle helmet, blue sky, salt desert, cinematic style, shot on 35mm film, vivid colors."

Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) is expanding beyond text-to-image models, with the emergence of text-to-video. Runway's Gen-2 model and Google's Imagen Video and Phenaki models create videos based on text prompts, but the challenge lies in achieving precision and avoiding fake or misleading videos. Ethical challenges also arise, as AI-generated videos could be used for deception via the creation of deepfakes. However, with Big Tech already involved in the development of text-to-video models, it may not be long before this technology becomes mainstream. When it comes to generative AI, there's only one thing dominating the headlines -- ChatGPT.

Video content is a must have for businesses and content creators wanting to compete in this highly visual environment. Reports have shown that more than 80% of online traffic is video traffic, and an increasing amount of people prefer it over other forms of online content like text and images. Most online publishers rely on social networks to reach audiences, and video content provides more organic reach than other types. At the same time, it has traditionally been both time-consuming and costly to produce and disseminate video content. Artificial intelligence (AI) is changing this outlook, making it easier than ever to generate video.

Not to be outdone by Meta's Make-A-Video, Google today detailed its work on Imagen Video, an AI system that can generate video clips given a text prompt (e.g., "a teddy bear washing dishes"). While the results aren't perfect -- the looping clips the system generates tend to have artifacts and noise -- Google claims that Imagen Video is a step toward a system with a "high degree of controllability" and world knowledge, including the ability to generate footage in a range of artistic styles. As my colleague Devin Coldewey noted in his piece about Make-A-Video, text-to-video systems aren't new. Earlier this year, a group of researchers from Tsinghua University and the Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence released CogVideo, which can translate text into reasonably-high-fidelity short clips. But Imagen Video appears to be a significant leap over the previous state-of-the-art, showing an aptitude for animating captions that existing systems would have trouble understanding.

Meta debuted a new type of art-generating AI that can create videos from nothing but text prompts - with results that are creepy, surreal and impressive. The artificial intelligence system announced on Thursday, called Make-A-Video, uses existing images with captions to learn about the world and how it's described and uses unlabeled videos to determine how the world moves. The resulting videos run the gamut from surreal to stylized and creepy to convincing. Mark Zuckerberg's company has not announced when the system may become available to the public or whether there will be any restrictions - but there's a sign-up form that people can fill out if they want to test Make-A-Video in the future. Advances in using AI to create videos on demand poses all sorts of ethical dilemmas - not to mention the possibility for deepfakes and disinformation.

Meta debuted a new type of art-generating AI that can create videos from nothing but text prompts - with results that are creepy, surreal and impressive. The artificial intelligence system announced on Thursday, called Make-A-Video, uses existing images with captions to learn about the world and how it's described and uses unlabeled videos to determine how the world moves. The resulting videos run the gamut from surreal to stylized and creepy to convincing. Mark Zuckerberg's company has not announced when the system may become available to the public or whether there will be any restrictions - but there's a sign-up form that people can fill out if they want to test Make-A-Video in the future. The artificial intelligence system announced on Thursday, called Make-A-Video, uses existing images with captions to learn about the world and how it's described and uses unlabeled videos to determine how the world moves Advances in using AI to create videos on demand poses all sorts of ethical dilemmas - not to mention the possibility for deepfakes and disinformation.

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YouTube might be eager to compete against giant podcast hosts like Amazon, Apple and Spotify. Bloomberg sources say YouTube is offering podcasters "grants" to produce videos, including filmed versions of their shows. Individual show creators would receive $50,000, while podcast networks would receive $200,000 or $300,000. Parent company Google declined to comment. YouTube is already a home for some podcasts, but it hasn't pursued that episodic content as aggressively as Spotify and other (typically audio-focused) services.