Robottal: Google and OpenAI release rival video-generative products

2/15/24 7:00PM

Portal combat

OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, yesterday announced new generative video model Sora, capable of transforming short text descriptions into intricately detailed, high-definition clips — just weeks after Google unveiled Lumiere, a very similar text-to-video AI product of its own.

Sora, taken from the Japanese for "sky", will generate 60-second films of anything from snowy cityscapes to alpine dog-podcasters using short, snappy prompts. Like Lumiere, OpenAI's latest creation uses space-time diffusion tech, but combines it with the transformer network used to train GPT-4.

While the quality and length of Sora’s sample videos seemingly supersede that of Lumiere and other rivals, neither OpenAI nor Google have provided much information about launch dates or what a typical output might look like — but, at the current pace of advances in AI technology, it’s easy to imagine big strides on both sides pretty soon.

Video manipulation

From today, OpenAI is ‘red teaming’ Sora — assessing critical risk areas for susceptibility to misinformation, bias, and hateful, violent, or sexual content — prior to public release, opening access to a few researchers, visual artists, and video creators for testing.

As OpenAI grapples with its new product's potential for misuse, fears surrounding AI continue to spread: a recent report from the World Economic Forum found that 53% of respondents considered AI-generated misinformation and disinformation among the threats most likely to present a global material crisis in 2024, second only to extreme weather (66%). And, with 2024 set to be a record election year, AI’s ability to create hyper-realistic falsified footage may well open Pandora’s ballot box on a global scale.

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Bot bias

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Prediction markets have, predictably, been given a boost by the summer of sports

Major platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket have seen huge upticks in users of late, thanks in no small part to what’s felt like a recent sporting smorgasbord, with major competitions across hockey, basketball, and soccer soaking up fans’ time (and spending, clearly) at the outset of summer.

While gaming industry groups may not like it, there’s been a huge change in the methods people are using to put money on the big games, with everyone from fortunate NYC bar owners, to a far less fortunate Spanish supporter, turning to prediction markets to try and turn their sports know-how into cold, hard cash.

According to a new report from Adam Blacker for apptopia, that shift might have been even more seismic than imagined in the wake of the NBA and NHL finals and around the 2026 World Cup kicking off.

2026 World Cup Reverses Seasonal Lull for Sports Betting Apps

According to a new report from Adam Blacker for apptopia, that shift might have been even more seismic than imagined in the wake of the NBA and NHL finals and around the 2026 World Cup kicking off.

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Gold Tesla Cybercabs are piling up, but they’re not picking up passengers yet

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Anthropic pulls Fable and Mythos access worldwide after Trump administration bars their use by foreign nationals

Only days after releasing two versions of its next-gen AI model, Anthropic has disabled them for users worldwide.

Anthropic says it received a Friday night order from the Trump administration to suspend access to the models for any foreign national (anywhere in the world) — a group that included some Anthropic employees. In response, the company turned off access to everyone.

Last week, the company released to the public its much-anticipated Claude Fable 5 model (and its restricted version Claude Mythos 5, which is still being tested with trusted partners). Anthropic said in a blog post announcing the action that officials cited national security concerns with the new models, while offering few specific details.

The post said that the government gave the company “verbal evidence of a potential narrow, non-universal jailbreak” of the public Fable 5 model. A jailbreak is a means by which users can evade restrictions built into the code to unlock prohibited functionality. Anthropic downplayed the significance of the attack, and said other major models, such as OpenAI’s GPT-5.5, could also be affected by the technique described.

Fears of these first Mythos-class models being misused are running high, after Anthropic warned the cybersecurity world in May that the advanced cyber capabilities of Mythos have rapidly discovered thousands of vulnerabilities in ubiquitous software, leading to the decision to restrict the full version of the model to a close group of trusted partners for testing.

This morning, Axios reported that Anthropic technical staff have flown to Washington to meet with White House officials to resolve the issue.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the Trump administration’s decision to take action against Anthropic was prompted by discussions that Amazon CEO Andy Jassy had with officials, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. According to the report, Amazon researchers said they had been able to evade some of Fable 5’s security restrictions using specific prompts. Amazon is a major investor in Anthropic.

Anthropic is currently suing the US government to fight the Pentagon’s blacklisting of the company on national security grounds.

Statement on the US government directive to suspend access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5