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ZDNET Highlights
- OpenAI announces character cameo for Sora.
- Characters come with their own names and personality characteristics.
- Sora is temporarily available in the US without an invitation code.
If you thought your Instagram feed already had plenty of AI-generated videos of dogs doing impossible things (backflips, rockclimbing, etc.), get ready to see a lot more.
On Wednesday, OpenAI announced Users of its Sora app can now create character cameos of animals and fantasy creatures using brief video clips. Sora gives these characters their own personality traits and usernames, which can be added to videos created in the social media-style app.
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Building on the ability to allow users to generate their own AI cameos, the new feature lets you “create cameos of characters in your life and imagination: your cat, a plushie, a doodle, or an original personality dreamed up by Sora,” OpenAI writes in its release notes“These characters can be tagged and reused by you – and, if you wish, by others – in future generations.”
The Sora app has been invite-only since its release last month, but OpenAI announced On Wednesday, users in the US, Canada, Japan and Korea could access it for a limited time without an invitation code.
How to create a cameo character
Once you’ve created an account on the Sora app, you’ll see a prominent “View Posts” button at the top of your account page, above your post gallery. Click on it, then “Create character” and you’ll be presented with the option to either record a new video (which will require camera access to be turned on) or choose an existing one from your camera roll.
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The video should include the face and body of the character you’re trying to replicate, for example, which could be the family pet. Keep in mind that this will not allow you to generate a human character cameo.
The app will then automatically generate a username, a display name, and a personality description for the character, which you can manually edit. It also gives you the option to list any “restrictions” or parameters around the types of behaviors you don’t want your character to exhibit.
As a final step, you can choose which people on the app will be able to use your new character: only you, people you’ve approved directly, “mutuals” (users who follow you who you follow back), or everyone. Then click “Done”. You’ll be able to see the finished product, along with all your other characters, by clicking the same “View Character” button on your profile homepage.
my experiments
To understand the new character cameo feature, I first uploaded a video of a young raccoon in a tree that had been buried in my phone’s video library for years. Sora named the character “Rooftop Rascal” and described it in human form as, “a clever, wide-eyed raccoon with a mischievous smile and a habit of snatching treasures from the treetops.” For no apparent reason, as its only restriction, I specified that it could only do one dance: the Doug,
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When I clicked a button to make a video (without adding any prompts), Sora spit out a short video of a raccoon on the roof carrying metal objects in a small wooden box, like a thief hoarding his stolen treasure. The character moved around for a while, I think, in what could be interpreted as an attempt at a doggie with its little arms and legs.
However, the video you upload does not need to include an actual animal. As another test, I uploaded a snippet from a video taken during a trip to Mexico City, showing a series of Aztec sculptures depicting snake heads on a walkway at the Museo Nacional de Antropología.
The resulting “Lava Lizard Sage” character, as it was dubbed by the app, “shares enigmatic riddles and slowly wanders the earth, moss and leaves clinging to its rough surface.”
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The videos of this character were strange and disturbing. One of them showed his rocky body slumped towards the camera, his vacant eyes staring straight ahead as words poured from his mouth, spoken in a voice that sounded a bit like James Earl Jones as Darth Vader.
It says, “I am born in a fire that has been cooled for centuries and I have embers in my stomach.”
Like all videos created by Sora, videos featuring custom characters include the app’s watermark, which bounces on users’ screens.
