Sora’s lead in the generative video space is already in jeopardy, and Meta’s highly anticipated AI hasn’t even been released yet. On Wednesday, Chinese tech titan Kuaishou Technology announced that its Kling AI video-generation system is now available to users around the globe.
Kling had officially launched in China last month, but was only available for users in the country and required a Chinese phone number to access. With the global rollout, users simply need to provide an email address — and a fair amount of patience.
The model is capable of generating high-definition video clips up to two minutes in length — double what Sora will reportedly be able to produce — at 30 frames per second (fps) and 720p resolution. Kling offers a 2,000-character context window and can receive both text and image inputs to create a quick 5-second clip. Users can then consecutively extend their videos by 4.5 seconds at a time, according to the company’s website. The Kuaishou team wrote on X that users will receive 66 credits per day. Each video generation will cost 10 credits. The team is also reportedly developing a subscription model.
Despite its impressive generative capabilities, Kling is limited in what it can produce. Specifically, it’s unable to generate videos of a politically sensitive nature. According to a TechCrunch report Thursday, prompts like “Democracy in China,” “Chinese President Xi Jinping walking down the street” and “Tienanmen Square protests” return nonspecific error messages. However, users are still able to upload and animate images of the same subjects without issue, so long as the user didn’t name the subject specifically in their prompt.
The Financial Times noted earlier this month that China’s primary internet regulator, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), plans to begin purity testing of AI systems developed in-country to ensure they “embody core socialist values” on a variety of sensitive topics. Those include criticism of the Communist Party and President Xi Jinping himself.
Kling is also severely limited, at least currently, in how quickly it can produce content. A five-second clip can take as much as 15 minutes or more to generate. Even getting the system to send an email verification code took inordinately long. It’s not clear, however, if that lag is due to underlying infrastructure issues or simply enormous user demand as folks rush to try out the new AI.
Kling isn’t the only AI to rival Sora. Runway released its Gen-3 video AI, which is capable of creating clips up to 10 seconds in length, earlier this month. That followed Luma Labs’ debut of Dream Machine in June, which saw similar performance issues when users overloaded the platform at launch.
