Artists Leak Access To OpenAI’s Text-To-Video Tool In Protest

A group of artists with early access to OpenAI’s text-to-video tool Sora leaked access for free as a protest against the AI startup.

According to the Washington Post, the protesters, allegedly early testers, considered OpenAI treated artists like “PR puppets” and, in revenge, allowed random users to try the video generator tool for free through the open-source AI platform Hugging Face before its official release to the public.

“Hundreds of artists provide unpaid labor through bug testing, feedback, and experimental work for the program for a $150B valued company,” wrote the artists under the nickname Sora PR Puppets in a post on Hugging Face, referring to the recent valuation of the AI company estimated at $157 billion.

According to TechCrunch, the artists published a project in the open-source AI platform using authentic tokens linked to Sora API. Users were able to use Sora for three hours until it was shut down, presumably by OpenAI or Hugging Face.

Many users managed to create the 10-second clip at up to a 1080p resolution that Sora can generate and shared them on social media platforms.

Made with Sora (see above for more info): pic.twitter.com/VlveALuvYS

— Kol Tregaskes (@koltregaskes) November 26, 2024

The members of Sora PR Puppets didn’t identify themselves but published an open letter and a petition to request OpenAI to compensate artists. The organized group invited other artists to join and even encouraged them to train their own AI models.

“We are not against the use of AI technology as a tool for the arts (if we were, we probably wouldn’t have been invited to this program),” they wrote in the open letter. “What we don’t agree with is how this artist program has been rolled out and how the tool is shaping up ahead of a possible public release. 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.”

Around 600 artists have signed the petition, some of them revealing their names and confirming their identities.

The war between artists and AI has been a trending topic this year. Last month, over 13,500 artists, including writer Kazuo Ishiguro and actress Julianne Moore, signed a petition to stop AI companies from scraping data to train AI models without permission.