Sora from OpenAI is now available… but unfortunately not in Poland and EU countries!

The videoAI tool announced in February 2024 by OpenAI is finally available to all users. All except EU countries and Switzerland due to legal regulations. The first community-generated videos are making quite an impression.

Sora, another Advent gift from OpenAI

The Advent calendar from OpenAI consists of 12 presentations every day, during which OpenAI reveals new products. During the first day, we learned about the ChatGPT Pro subscription, which costs as much as $200 per month. Under this subscription plan, users have access to all models from OpenAI without limits (huge amount of tokens). However, there was an uproar on the Internet because over PLN 800 for a ChatuGPT subscription seemed to be an abstract amount.

Yesterday, during the 3rd day of Advent announcements, Sam Altman and his colleagues presented Sora, a video AI generator whose capabilities and announcements we saw already in February this year.

Thanks to advanced algorithms and deep understanding of natural language, Sora allows you to create dynamic videos up to 20 seconds long in HD quality (lower resolutions that consume fewer tokens are also available). Moreover, the tool can maintain visual consistency within one production, which is especially important when creating narratives based on recurring characters or visual styles.

Instead of 60-second shots, just 20-second shots

Although Sora was initially supposed to offer up to 60-second clips, currently the maximum length of one animation is 20 seconds. However, the creators of the tool have added some interesting options, such as storyboard, i.e. the ability to create consecutive animations. In Sora, it is possible to create videos using both the text-to-video method (we describe what we want to achieve in the prompt) and the picture-to-video method, which allows you to upload graphics and animate them.

When it comes to limits and costs, ChatGPT Plus, a $20 subscription, provides 50 generations per month. Is that a lot? Definitely not, considering that not every shot is animated exactly as the user wants or expects. Sora sometimes has difficulty accurately reproducing complex interactions between objects, e.g. the movement of characters or the realism of physics in scenes, which in some cases looks downright grotesque. However, this does not change the fact that compared to competing generators, Sora performs very well and is currently one of the leading AI video generators.

Poland, EU, UK and Switzerland are still waiting for Sora

Unfortunately, for now, residents of Poland and the European Union have to make do – the tool is available everywhere, except the EU, UK and Switzerland, due to dissonance with applicable regulations. We can therefore reasonably suspect that the reason for Sora’s delay in the EU is the AI ​​Act. How quickly will Europe and Poland have access to the tool that now powers the entire Internet? It’s hard to say. In the case of advanced voice mode, it was several months.

What’s next? OpenAI announced further development of Sora, including security-related tests and tools to identify AI-generated content. This may be crucial in the context of counteracting deepfakes and disinformation. Shots created with Sora can be photorealistic, especially when we animate graphics or photos.