“Pika felt surreal as if you were in a trippy film moment. The children’s version is much better than the League Of Gentlemen surrealness of the adult iteration, but the rest of the environment lacks details from the prompt. I do have a certain fondness for the vibrancy of [Pika’s children’s] version, as it conveys a sense of joy and happiness more strongly than any of the others.”
Enlarge / At left, the video generated by Sora includes multiple elements, such as the banana slide, runner bean frame, and watermelon roundabout. At right, the video generated by Runway has distorting limbs throughout.
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“Runway was very much in the middle. Certainly, in the adult version, there was less glitching, but the representation of the playground elements was lacking.
“I could potentially use the Sora video as a taster of something we could bring to life in a virtual experience. It would demonstrate the playfulness of food. However, you may need to add a human layer to the content by using editing tools.
“These tools will speed up the way we communicate creative ideas and make them more tangible. For example, in the early stages of presenting a concept to a brand, this would make it much easier for clients to understand what it could look like or how it would work.
“My prompt has abstract creative concepts that are harder for these tools. Often, in the world of creativity, you’re trying to create something that hasn’t existed before. I know there is a lot of concern and perhaps negativity about AI taking all of our jobs, but I think we should consider how AI is going to make our jobs easier and relieve some burdens.”
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Alex Williams, animator whose credits include Who Framed Roger Rabbit? and The Lion King
Videos generated by OpenAI’s revised prompt:
“It has that slight morphy quality that AI-generated work has, which I don’t think makes it client-ready yet, but that’s something that will get smoothed out.
“Each one is amazing in terms of what it does, but each one [has] obvious mistakes . . . like heads changing shape and flamingos blending into other flamingos—it doesn’t work yet.”
Enlarge / Runway’s video had issues with heads changing shape.
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“It didn’t manage to produce a short film with a beginning, middle, and end, so it didn’t do what I hoped it would. On the other hand, what it does in terms of animation is very impressive.
“Since I started in animation in the ’80s, some very significant technological advances have changed the medium a lot. There’s no question that this is the biggest change I’ve seen in my career.
“I would draw comparisons with the switch from 2D to 3D animation, which happened in the late ’90s when Toy Story came out. There was a lot of resistance among the hand-drawn animation community to those changes, including me, in the beginning.
“It took me a couple of years to realize I had to embrace this change. We all fought it collectively for a while, but it became the great box office driver. As an industry we do need to embrace technology because you never want to get on the wrong side.”
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Ashley Shakibai, production manager at commercial real estate agents OBI Property
Videos generated by prompt for promotional video of a commercial building in Manchester:
“Sora did a reasonable job at the start. The transition will always be tricky, and it struggled with that. But I think the photorealism at the end of the shot was quite pleasing and surprising.
“Technically, the prompt was that people were walking in the building, but that was not shown, and there were many other elements it didn’t achieve.
“All Pika has gathered from my prompt is a ‘sunny day.’ It has given us some flares and a couple of buildings, but you can’t make out the people.”
Enlarge / At left, Sora generated people with more realistic faces. At right, Runway distorted people’s features.
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“I had to laugh when I watched this Runway one. There’s a bit more photorealism, but the people are walking forwards and then backwards, so it’s certainly not a believable scene.
“As an industry professional, my expectation is perfection. I am looking for realistic-quality video, and AI is probably never going to quite get there.
“At the end of the Sora video, the couple is having a conversation in a coffee shop, looking like they’re enjoying themselves. That would be a shot that we’d use to sell a commercial property space as an amenity nearby.
“We will eventually reach a point where this is an incredibly powerful tool for creators, inevitably eliminating the use of other tools. Sora will seriously challenge stock websites and the role of actors, both of which we use now.
“You must be very careful when adding computer-generated imagery. If it’s not for a purpose, if it’s not believable, it can be too distracting. It is very much at the testing stage.”
Additional reporting by Madhumita Murgia.
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