ChatGPT’s OpenAI reveals text-to-video tool

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on X said the company was “offering access to a limited number of creators” in a testing phase. (AFP/File)
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Updated 16 February 2024
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ChatGPT’s OpenAI reveals text-to-video tool

  • Sora model will allow users to create realistic videos up to a minute long with a simple prompt
  • OpenAI said the model will undergo adversarial testing to ensure its safety and prevent the generation of inappropriate content

SAN FRANCISCO: OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT and image generator DALL-E, said it was testing a text-to-video model called Sora that would allow users to create realistic videos with a simple prompt.
The Microsoft-backed company said the new platform was currently being tested but released a few videos of what it said was already possible, with the accompanying input made to generate the video.
“Sora can generate videos up to a minute long while maintaining visual quality and adherence to the user’s prompt,” OpenAI said in a blog post.
The model could also take an existing still image and generate a video from it, the company said.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on X said the company was “offering access to a limited number of creators” in a testing phase.
He also invited users to suggest prompts on X, the convincing results of which he posted on the platform a few moments later.
These included a short video of two golden retrievers podcasting on a mountain.
Another showed a “half duck half dragon (that) flies through a beautiful sunset with a hamster dressed in adventure gear on its back.”
The San Francisco-based startup warned that the “current model has weaknesses” such as confusing left and right or failing to maintain visual continuity throughout the length of a video.
In its announcement, the company said that safety would be key and that Sora would face adversarial testing — known as red-teaming — in which dedicated users try to make the platform malfunction, produce inappropriate content or go off the rails.
“We’ll be engaging policymakers, educators and artists around the world to understand their concerns and to identify positive use cases for this new technology,” OpenAI said.
Meta, Google and Runway AI are also working on text-to-video AI technology and have released similar samples of their work.


China’s national security agency in Hong Kong summons international media representatives

Updated 06 December 2025
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China’s national security agency in Hong Kong summons international media representatives

HONG KONG: China’s national security agency in Hong Kong summoned international media representatives for a “regulatory talk” on Saturday, saying some had spread false information and smeared the government in recent reports on a deadly fire and upcoming legislative elections.
Senior journalists from several major outlets operating in the city, including AFP, were summoned to the meeting by the Office for Safeguarding National Security (OSNS), which was opened in 2020 following Beijing’s imposition of a wide-ranging national security law on the city.
Through the OSNS, Beijing’s security agents operate openly in Hong Kong, with powers to investigate and prosecute national security crimes.
“Recently, some foreign media reports on Hong Kong have disregarded facts, spread false information, distorted and smeared the government’s disaster relief and aftermath work, attacked and interfered with the Legislative Council election, (and) provoked social division and confrontation,” an OSNS statement posted online shortly after the meeting said.
At the meeting, an official who did not give his name read out a similar statement to media representatives.
He did not give specific examples of coverage that the OSNS had taken issue with, and did not take questions.
The online OSNS statement urged journalists to “not cross the legal red line.”
“The Office will not tolerate the actions of all anti-China and trouble-making elements in Hong Kong, and ‘don’t say we didn’t warn you’,” it read.
For the past week and a half, news coverage in Hong Kong has been dominated by a deadly blaze on a residential estate which killed at least 159 people.
Authorities have warned against crimes that “exploit the tragedy” and have reportedly arrested at least three people for sedition in the fire’s aftermath.
Dissent in Hong Kong has been all but quashed since Beijing brought in the national security law, after huge and sometimes violent protests in 2019.
Hong Kong’s electoral system was revamped in 2021 to ensure that only “patriots” could hold office, and the upcoming poll on Sunday will select a second batch of lawmakers under those rules.