OpenAI’s Sora makes disinformation extremely easy, real

In its first three days, users of a new app from OpenAL deployed artificial intelligence to create strikingly realistic videos of ballot fraud, immigration arrests, protests, crimes and attacks on city streets — none of which took place.

- TIFFANY HSU, STUART A THOMPSON & STEVEN LEE MYERS.

The app, called Sora, requires just a text prompt to create almost any footage a user can dream up. Users can also upload images of themselves, allowing their likeness and voice to become incorporated into imaginary scenes.

Sora — as well as Google’s Veo 3 and other tools like it — could become increasingly fertile breeding grounds for disinformation and abuse, experts said. While worries about Al’s ability to enable misleading content and outright fabrications have risen steadily in recent years, Sora’s advances underscore just how much easier such content is to produce, and how much more convincing it is.

OpenAl has said it released the app after extensive safety testing, and experts noted that the company had made an effort to include guardrails.

In tests by The New York Times, the app refused to generate imagery of famous people who had not given their permission and declined prompts that asked for graphic violence. It also denied some prompts asking for political content.