The free Sora app, available from Tuesday by invitation, is powered by a new version of OpenAI’s video-making software of the same name.
As with the original Sora, released in December, users can generate short clips in response to text prompts, but the new app allows people to see videos created by others.
Beyond that, users can create a realistic-looking AI avatar and voice of themselves, which can be inserted into videos made with the app by the user or their friends, with the avatar owner’s permission.
Despite its success with ChatGPT, now used by more than 700 million people weekly, OpenAI has yet to turn Sora into a household name.
The company faces stiff competition from the likes of Alphabet’s Google, Runway AI and Midjourney, each of which offers AI tools that spit out short clips quickly and, in some cases, more cheaply than creating video from scratch.
