Credit OpenAI Blog
2024 has barely gotten underway, and OpenAI, the developers behind ChatGPT, have just made another quantum leap for generative AI with Sora, the company’s text-based AI video generator. Though not available to the public yet, Sora will allow users to generate short, incredibly realistic video content based on just a few lines of text. OpenAI has already demonstrated how powerful the new tool is, sharing stunning visuals and the text prompts used to generate them on its blog. A handful of users who have already been given access have also been sharing the results.As well as creating video from scratch, Sora can also add elements into or edit uploaded video clips, create video from still images, or combine existing video elements together. It's a stunning and somewhat scary leap in technology that, if released, will remove the need for expensive and intensive video production and, in the process, wipe out a lot of jobs.
While the costs of producing video content have been made more accessible and cheaper over recent years, it still requires expensive kit and a significant, wide-ranging set of skills from videography, scripting, editing, and motion graphics to do it well.
And that’s without all the other things like lighting, actors, or animators you might need. Video is a major and expensive undertaking for marketers.
With a stroke, Sora will have effectively reduced all those activities and skills into a prompt.For many, this will be a game-changer, streamlining how brands can message to audiences massively. For others, if OpenAI releases Sora (and there are many good arguments not to), it spells the end of their industry. While it may not impact high-end production companies and agencies yet, from what we’ve seen, cheaper content creation teams look to have a difficult time ahead.
It’s not perfect yet – like all generative AI, there’ll be an element of trial and error as you try to work out a prompt that will create the footage you need. Of course, there are all those other familiar quirks of AI images – expect extra limbs, scenes that defy conventional physics, and little details that feel off, but as a demo that is only going to get better, it’s stunning.
We expect that changing prompts and starting over, again and again, to get a version without those issues will be time-consuming and annoying but still infinitely cheaper than most video production. Given the rate of improvement we’ve seen in Generative AI in the last 18 months, it won’t be long before it’s close to perfect or ‘good enough.’For marketers, it’s going to be tempting to create a lot of videos! The ability to create social media content and ads so fast, cheaply, and easily will undoubtedly generate a wave of bad AI-generated video.
How do brands avoid this trap? Well, there is a long answer to this and a short answer.
For the longer term, you need to make sure your marketing organization is AI-ready by having the right people, processes, and technology. If you’d like to understand where you sit on that scale of readiness, then please get in touch with us. We’re building an in-depth scoring system to give you an internal and external view of AI readiness.As for the short answer? Remember to ask, who is the video for? What is the audience for this content, and what calls to action do you want to achieve?
For us, this highlights the importance of a really good audience analysis. Getting great results from this content isn’t about the technology anymore; it’s about how well a brand understands its audience and how well it can tell its story. By understanding how your audiences think, care, and behave through online conversation, you can craft content that not only catches the eye but also hits the right emotional resonances as storytelling for the people whose attention you most need.
Using Audience intelligence helps evaluate content's impact and allows brands to optimize performance quickly and efficiently, and now with Generative AI Video, you’ll be able to engage with audiences much faster. For instance, if a brand learns about a new trend that their audience is reacting to, they can produce videos with Sora that will resonate with them in moments.
However, the path isn't without its hurdles. There's always a risk of producing content that might misrepresent or weaken the brand message, highlighting the need for vigilant oversight and adherence to brand values.
It’s understandably exciting tech, and the advantages are significant. Sora will make video production accessible to businesses of every size, but it will need to be handled with real care, and with proper alignment of intention and audience in mind.
Its success in marketing strategies will depend on a deep understanding of the audience and the storytelling ability of those wielding it.
Published on 2023-02-19 14:54:02