Sora is full of copyrighted characters. It’s a gamble for OpenAI

OpenAI launched short-form video app Sora this week, and users have flooded the platform with artificial intelligence-generated clips of popular brands and animated characters.

The startup could soon face a deluge of copyright lawsuits, experts told CNBC.

“A lot of the videos that people are going to generate of these cartoon characters are going to infringe copyright,” Mark Lemley, a professor at Stanford Law School, said in an interview. “OpenAI is opening itself up to quite a lot of copyright lawsuits by doing this.” 

Sora allows users to create short videos for free by typing in a prompt. The app is only available on iOS devices and is invite-based, which means people need a code to access it.

Since its launch on Tuesday, Sora has already climbed to the top of Apple’s App Store.  

CNBC gained access to Sora on Wednesday and has viewed videos that included characters from shows like “SpongeBob SquarePants,” “Rick and Morty” and “South Park,” as well as movies like “Despicable Me.”

One video showed OpenAI CEO Sam Altman standing in a field with several Pokémon characters, where he says, “I hope Nintendo doesn’t sue us.” Another shows the fictional McDonald’s mascot Ronald McDonald fleeing from police in a car shaped like a burger. 

CNBC was also able to generate several characters and logos independently, including Ronald McDonald, Patrick Star from “SpongeBob SquarePants,” Pikachu from the Pokémon franchise, a Starbucks coffee cup and characters from “The Simpsons.”

McDonald’s declined to comment. The other companies behind these characters and logos did not respond to CNBC’s requests for comment.

“People are eager to engage with their family and friends through their own imaginations, as well as stories, characters, and worlds they love, and we see new opportunities for creators to deepen their connection with the fans,” Varun Shetty, OpenAI’s head of media partnerships, told CNBC in a statement. “We’ll work with rights holders to block characters from Sora at their request and respond to takedown requests.”

As AI startups have rapidly changed the way that people can interact with content online, media companies and other brands have kicked off a series of fresh legal battles to try and protect their intellectual property.

Disney and Universal have sued the AI image creator Midjourney, alleging that the company improperly used and distributed AI-generated characters from their movies. Disney also sent a cease and desist letter to Character.AI last week, warning the startup to stop using its copyrighted characters without authorization.

Characters are copyrightable — meaning third parties can’t use copyrighted or original characters without permission — and Sora is primed to be a fresh breeding ground for infringement disputes.

If a company loses control over what their copyrighted characters do and say in user-generated videos, it’s going to be a problem, Lemley said. 

“You can imagine why Taylor Swift wouldn’t want — even if pornography is off the table — wouldn’t want videos of her purporting to say things she doesn’t say,” he said. “I think the same is going to be true of cartoon characters.”

OpenAI said it respects takedown requests that are submitted through its “Copyright Disputes” form, which allows content owners to flag specific content. Users can also report videos for copyright infringement and trademark infringement directly through the app. 

The company said these actions provide granularity on a character-by-character basis, and they are different from a blanket opt-out. 

OpenAI reportedly gave some talent agencies and studios the option to opt-out of Sora and exclude their copyrighted material ahead of the app’s launch, according to the Wall Street Journal. 

That kind of an arrangement would be unusual, according to Jason Bloom, partner and chair of the intellectual property litigation practice group at the law firm Haynes Boone. Typically, third parties have to get explicit permission to use someone’s work under copyright law.

“You can’t just post a notice to the public saying we’re going to use everybody’s works, unless you tell us not to,” he said. “That’s not how copyright works.” 

OpenAI said it has taken steps to address potential safety concerns around the Sora app, including giving users explicit control over how their likeness is used on the platform. 

Users can choose to create a “cameo” of themselves that they can insert into videos, and they have direct control over who can access it. In practice, this means users can’t generate videos of another person or public figure without that person’s explicit permission. 

In a blog post late Friday, Altman said similar, more granular controls are coming for rights holders.

“We assume different people will try very different approaches and will figure out what works for them,” Altman wrote. “But we want to apply the same standard towards everyone, and let rightsholders decide how to proceed (our aim of course is to make it so compelling that many people want to).”

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