Connect with us

Published

on

OpenAI said Monday it’s releasing its buzzy AI video-generation tool, Sora, later in the day.

The AI video-generation model works similarly to OpenAI’s image-generation AI tool, DALL-E: A user types out a desired scene, and Sora will return a high-definition video clip. Sora can also generate video clips inspired by still images and extend existing videos or fill in missing frames. The Microsoft-backed artificial intelligence startup, which burst into the mainstream last year thanks to the viral popularity of ChatGPT, introduced Sora in February.

It’ll debut to U.S. users as well as to “most countries internationally” later today, according to OpenAI’s YouTube livestream, and the company has “no timeline” yet for launching the tool in Europe and the U.K., as well as some other countries.

OpenAI said users don’t need to pay extra for the tool, which will be included in existing ChatGPT accounts such as Plus and Pro. Employees on the livestream and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman demonstrated features like “Blend” (i.e., joining two scenes together at the user’s direction), as well as the option to make an AI-generated video endlessly repeat.

Until now, Sora has mainly been available to a small group of safety testers, or “red-teamers,” who test the model for vulnerabilities in areas such as misinformation and bias.

Reddit users asked OpenAI executives in October about Sora’s release date, questioning whether it was being delayed “due to the amount of compute/time required for inference or due to safety.” In response, OpenAI’s product chief Kevin Weil wrote, “Need to perfect the model, need to get safety/impersonation/other things right, and need to scale compute!”

“We obviously have a big target on our back as OpenAI,” Rohan Sahai, OpenAI’s Sora product lead, said on the livestream, adding that the company needs to prevent illegal use of the technology. “But we also want to balance that with creative expression.”

OpenAI closed its latest funding round in October at a valuation of $157 billion, including the $6.6 billion the company raised from an extensive roster of investment firms and Big Tech companies. It also received a $4 billion revolving line of credit, bringing its total liquidity to more than $10 billion.

It’s all part of a serious growth plan for OpenAI, as the Microsoft-backed artificial intelligence startup battles Amazon-backed Anthropic, Elon Musk’s xAI, GoogleMeta, Microsoft and Amazon for the biggest slice of the generative AI market, which is predicted to top $1 trillion in revenue within a decade.

Earlier this month, OpenAI hired its first chief marketing officer, indicating plans to spend more on marketing to grow its user base. And in October, OpenAI debuted a search feature within ChatGPT that positions it to better compete with search engines like GoogleMicrosoft‘s Bing and Perplexity and may attract more users who otherwise visited those sites to search the web.

With Sora, the ChatGPT maker is looking to compete with video-generation AI tools from companies such as Meta and Google, which announced Lumiere in January. Similar AI tools are available from other startups, such as Stability AI’s Stable Video Diffusion. Amazon has also released Create with Alexa, a model that specializes in generating prompt-based short-form animated children’s content.

Video could be the next frontier for generative AI now that chatbots and image generators have made their way into the consumer and business world. While the creative opportunities will excite some AI enthusiasts, the new technologies present serious misinformation concerns as major political elections occur across the globe. The number of AI-generated deepfakes created has increased 900% year over year, according to data from Clarity, a machine learning firm.

OpenAI has made multimodality — the combining of text, image and video generation — a prominent goal in its effort to offer a broader suite of AI models.

News of Sora’s release follows protestors’ decision to leak what appeared to be a copy of Sora over concerns about the ChatGPT maker’s treatment of artists.

Some members of OpenAI’s early access program for Sora, which it said included about 300 artists, published an open letter in late November critiquing OpenAI for not being sufficiently open or supporting the arts beyond marketing.

“Dear corporate AI overlords,” the protestors’ open letter stated, “We received access to Sora with the promise to be early testers, red teamers and creative partners. However, we believe instead we are being lured into ‘art washing’ to tell the world that Sora is a useful tool for artists.”

The letter added that hundreds of artists provided unpaid labor for OpenAI through bug testing and feedback on Sora, and that “while hundreds contribute for free, a select few will be chosen through a competition to have their Sora-created films screened — offering minimal compensation which pales in comparison to the substantial PR and marketing value OpenAI receives.”

“We are not against the use of AI technology as a tool for the arts (if we were, we probably wouldn’t have been invited to this program),” the open letter stated. “What we don’t agree with is how this artist program has been rolled out and how the tool is shaping up ahead of a possible public release. We are sharing this to the world in the hopes that OpenAI becomes more open, more artist friendly and supports the arts beyond PR stunts.”

In late November, an OpenAI spokesperson responded to the protestors’ actions in a statement to CNBC.

“Hundreds of artists in our alpha have shaped Sora’s development, helping prioritize new features and safeguards,” the OpenAI spokesperson said at the time. “Participation is voluntary, with no obligation to provide feedback or use the tool. We’ve been excited to offer these artists free access and will continue supporting them through grants, events, and other programs.”

Continue Reading

Technology

How TikTok’s rise sparked a short-form video race

Published

on

By

How TikTok’s rise sparked a short-form video race

TikTok’s grip on the short-form video market is tightening, and the world’s biggest tech platforms are racing to catch up.

Since launching globally in 2016, ByteDance-owned TikTok has amassed over 1.12 billion monthly active users worldwide, according to Backlinko. American users spend an average of 108 minutes per day on the app, according to Apptoptia.

TikTok’s success has reshaped the social media landscape, forcing competitors like Meta and Google to pivot their strategies around short-form video. But so far, experts say that none have matched TikTok’s algorithmic precision.

“It is the center of the internet for young people,” said Jasmine Enberg, vice president and principal analyst at Emarketer. “It’s where they go for entertainment, news, trends, even shopping. TikTok sets the tone for everyone else.”

Platforms like Meta‘s Instagram Reels and Google’s YouTube Shorts have expanded aggressively, launching new features, creator tools and even considering separate apps just to compete. Microsoft-owned LinkedIn, traditionally a professional networking site, is the latest to experiment with TikTok-style feeds. But with TikTok continuing to evolve, adding features like e-commerce integrations and longer videos, the question remains whether rivals can keep up.

“I’m scrolling every single day. I doom scroll all the time,” said TikTok content creator Alyssa McKay.

But there may a dark side to this growth.

As short-form content consumption soars, experts warn about shrinking attention spans and rising mental-health concerns, particularly among younger users. Researchers like Dr. Yann Poncin, associate professor at the Child Study Center at Yale University, point to disrupted sleep patterns and increased anxiety levels tied to endless scrolling habits.

“Infinite scrolling and short-form video are designed to capture your attention in short bursts,” Dr. Poncin said. “In the past, entertainment was about taking you on a journey through a show or story. Now, it’s about locking you in for just a few seconds, just enough to feed you the next thing the algorithm knows you’ll like.”

Despite sky-high engagement, monetizing short videos remains an uphill battle. Unlike long-form YouTube content, where ads can be inserted throughout, short clips offer limited space for advertisers. Creators, too, are feeling the squeeze.

“It’s never been easier to go viral,” said Enberg. “But it’s never been harder to turn that virality into a sustainable business.”

Last year, TikTok generated an estimated $23.6 billion in ad revenues, according to Oberlo, but even with this growth, many creators still make just a few dollars per million views. YouTube Shorts pays roughly four cents per 1,000 views, which is less than its long-form counterpart. Meanwhile, Instagram has leaned into brand partnerships and emerging tools like “Trial Reels,” which allow creators to experiment with content by initially sharing videos only with non-followers, giving them a low-risk way to test new formats or ideas before deciding whether to share with their full audience. But Meta told CNBC that monetizing Reels remains a work in progress.

While lawmakers scrutinize TikTok’s Chinese ownership and explore potential bans, competitors see a window of opportunity. Meta and YouTube are poised to capture up to 50% of reallocated ad dollars if TikTok faces restrictions in the U.S., according to eMarketer.

Watch the video to understand how TikTok’s rise sparked a short form video race.

Continue Reading

Technology

Elon Musk’s xAI Holdings in talks to raise $20 billion, Bloomberg News reports

Published

on

By

Elon Musk's xAI Holdings in talks to raise  billion, Bloomberg News reports

The X logo appears on a phone, and the xAI logo is displayed on a laptop in Krakow, Poland, on April 1, 2025. (Photo by Klaudia Radecka/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Nurphoto | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Elon Musk‘s xAI Holdings is in discussions with investors to raise about $20 billion, Bloomberg News reported Friday, citing people familiar with the matter.

The funding would value the company at over $120 billion, according to the report.

Musk was looking to assign “proper value” to xAI, sources told CNBC’s David Faber earlier this month. The remarks were made during a call with xAI investors, sources familiar with the matter told Faber. The Tesla CEO at that time didn’t explicitly mention any upcoming funding round, but the sources suggested xAI was preparing for a substantial capital raise in the near future.

The funding amount could be more than $20 billion as the exact figure had not been decided, the Bloomberg report added.

Artificial intelligence startup xAI didn’t immediately respond to a CNBC request for comment outside of U.S. business hours.

Faber Report: Elon Musk held call with current xAI investors, sources say

The AI firm last month acquired X in an all-stock deal that valued xAI at $80 billion and the social media platform at $33 billion.

“xAI and X’s futures are intertwined. Today, we officially take the step to combine the data, models, compute, distribution and talent,” Musk said on X, announcing the deal. “This combination will unlock immense potential by blending xAI’s advanced AI capability and expertise with X’s massive reach.”

Read the full Bloomberg story here.

— CNBC’s Samantha Subin contributed to this report.

Continue Reading

Technology

Alphabet jumps 3% as search, advertising units show resilient growth

Published

on

By

Alphabet jumps 3% as search, advertising units show resilient growth

Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai during the Google I/O developers conference in Mountain View, California, on May 10, 2023.

David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Alphabet‘s stock gained 3% Friday after signaling strong growth in its search and advertising businesses amid a competitive artificial intelligence environment and uncertain macro backdrop.

GOOGL‘s pace of GenAI product roll-out is accelerating with multiple encouraging signals,” wrote Morgan Stanley‘s Brian Nowak. “Macro uncertainty still exists but we remain [overweight] given GOOGL’s still strong relative position and improving pace of GenAI enabled product roll-out.”

The search giant posted earnings of $2.81 per share on $90.23 billion in revenues. That topped the $89.12 billion in sales and $2.01 in EPS expected by LSEG analysts. Revenues grew 12% year-over-year and ahead of the 10% anticipated by Wall Street.

Net income rose 46% to $34.54 billion, or $2.81 per share. That’s up from $23.66 billion, or $1.89 per share, in the year-ago period. Alphabet said the figure included $8 billion in unrealized gains on its nonmarketable equity securities connected to its investment in a private company.

Adjusted earnings, excluding that gain, were $2.27 per share, according to LSEG, and topped analyst expectations.

Read more CNBC tech news

Alphabet shares have pulled back about 16% this year as it battles volatility spurred by mounting trade war fears and worries that President Donald Trump‘s tariffs could crush the global economy. That would make it more difficult for Alphabet to potentially acquire infrastructure for data centers powering AI models as it faces off against competitors such as OpenAI and Anthropic to develop largely language models.

During Thursday’s call with investors, Alphabet suggested that it’s too soon to tally the total impact of tariffs. However, Google’s business chief Philipp Schindler said that ending the de minimis trade exemption in May, which created a loophole benefitting many Chinese e-commerce retailers, could create a “slight headwind” for the company’s ads business, specifically in the Asia-Pacific region. The loophole allows shipments under $800 to come into the U.S. duty-free.

Despite this backdrop, Alphabet showed steady growth in its advertising and search business, reporting $66.89 billion in revenues for its advertising unit. That reflected 8.5% growth from the year-ago period. The company reported $8.93 billion in advertising revenue for its YouTube business, shy of an $8.97 billion estimate from StreetAccount.

Alphabet’s “Search and other” unit rose 9.8% to $50.7 billion, up from $46.16 billion last year. The company said that its AI Overviews tool used in its Google search results page has accumulated 1.5 billion monthly users from a billion in October.

Bank of America analyst Justin Post said that Wall Street is underestimating the upside potential and “monetization ramp” from this tool and cloud demand fueled by AI.

“The strong 1Q search performance, along with constructive comments on Gemini [large language model] performance and [AI Overviews] adoption could help alleviate some investor concerns on AI competition,” Post wrote in a note.

WATCH: Gemini delivering well for Google, says Check Capital’s Chris Ballard

Gemini delivering well for Google, says Check Capital's Chris Ballard

CNBC’s Jennifer Elias contributed to this report.

Continue Reading

Trending