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A group calling itself ‘Sora PR Puppets’ has reportedly leaked access to OpenAI’s experimental video generation tool, Sora. The group accuses the AI powerhouse of exploiting artists and ‘art washing’ to spin a positive narrative around the still-unreleased tool. The leaked access surfaced via Hugging Face, where the group created a frontend allowing users to generate short 1080p videos using Sora’s API.
The leak offered users a glimpse into Sora’s capabilities, allowing the creation of 10-second videos from text prompts. However, as the word spread, OpenAI appears to have swiftly revoked access, reportedly shutting down the system for all early testers, reports TechCrunch.
By midday Tuesday, the front end was non-functional, ending the short-lived public window into the tool’s performance.
Users on social media platform X managed to share samples of Sora-generated videos, many bearing the OpenAI signature watermark. While these glimpses revealed the system’s technical potential, the controversy surrounding the leak highlighted broader issues.
The group behind the leak has criticised OpenAI’s approach to Sora’s development, accusing the company of exploiting hundreds of artists involved in its early access program. According to Sora PR Puppets, artists provided feedback and experimental input without fair compensation while subjected to overly restrictive control.
They also accused OpenAI of curating a positive public narrative by limiting the dissemination of Sora-generated works and selectively approving output for public sharing.
On the other hand, OpenAI defended its practices, emphasising that participation in Sora’s alpha program is voluntary and that contributors face no obligations beyond responsible use of the tool. However, the company has not clarified what constitutes responsible use or which details it considers confidential.
Sora, first revealed by OpenAI earlier this year, has faced significant technical and competitive challenges. Early versions of the tool struggled with consistency, requiring users to generate hundreds of iterations to produce stable results.
The company has upgraded Sora to a faster ‘turbo’ variant with style controls and customisation options to reduce the processing time. OpenAI has also trained the system on millions of hours of high-quality video to improve its outputs.
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