- Pope to visit Belgium, Luxembourg in September
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- Strikes pound Gaza as Israel voices 'duty' to expand Rafah incursion
- Russia tries playwright and director on terror charges
- Iran mourns president Raisi's death in helicopter crash
- Attack on tourists rocks fledgling Afghanistan tourism sector
- Paralympics should put disability back on global agenda, says IPC chief
- South Africa's top court strikes Zuma from ballot
- Crunch time looms for BHP's bid buy Anglo American
- Kane to face old club Spurs for first time in Seoul
- Markets rise as traders cheered by China property plan
- Black farmers in Brazil changing views on coffee production
- Iran's President Raisi declared dead in helicopter crash
- Australia police arrest 554 in domestic violence crackdown
- South Korea, Britain host AI summit with safety top of agenda
- New president Lai vows to defend Taiwan's democracy
- Forever fad: Rubik says his cube 'reminds us why we have hands'
- Trump eyes witness stand as trial draws to a close
- Ryanair annual profit jumps on higher demand, fares
- High-priced Cummins, Starc face off as IPL enters playoffs
- Iran media says President Raisi died in helicopter crash
- Dominican Republic President Abinader re-elected to 2nd term
- New Taiwan president Lai hails 'glorious' democracy
- New Caledonia separatists defy French efforts to unblock roads
- Timberwolves knock out defending champion Nuggets, Pacers oust Knicks
- Trump biopic hits Cannes Film Festival
- Iran President Raisi's helicopter found, 'no sign of life'
- Three talking points ahead of 2024 French Open
- 'Haikyu!!': Comic heroes fuel Japan Olympic volleyball manga mania
- Timberwolves rally to knock defending champion Nuggets out of NBA playoffs
- London court set to rule on Julian Assange extradition
- Business and Bollywood votes in India election
- Pope calls anti-migrant attitudes at US border 'madness'
- Mexico aims to be big economic winner from US-China tensions
- Uncertain future for thousands after deadly Brazil floods
- Schauffele makes the putt of his life for first major win
- Wirtz returns to help unbeaten Leverkusen chase history
- Search for Iran's President Raisi after helicopter goes missing
- DeChambeau's powerful putting has him excited for US Open
- Taiwan to swear in new president as China pressure grows
- Atalanta can end 61-year wait for trophy in Europa League final
- Schauffele birdies final hole to capture PGA for first major win
- Guardiola casts doubt over long-term Man City future
- Hollywood icons Costner and Demi Moore make Cannes comeback
- Pacers shoot down Knicks to reach NBA Eastern Conference finals
- Schauffele birdies final hole, captures first major at PGA Championship
- McLaughlin powers to Indy 500 pole in all-Penske front row
- Monaco footballer tapes over LGBTQ badge
- Korda wins sixth LPGA title of year with win at Liberty National
- Pacers put on shooting show to down Knicks, reach NBA Eastern Conference finals
'It's frightening': YouTubers split over OpenAI's video tool Sora
US firm OpenAI debuted a tool last week that can generate highly realistic snippets of video from just a few lines of text, leading content creators to wonder if they are the latest professionals about to be replaced by algorithms.
Reactions to the tool, called Sora, have ranged from head-over-heels enthusiasm to alarm over the future direction of the industry.
YouTuber Marques Brownlee called it "frightening" and "threatening" to see an AI doing his job.
On the other hand, Caleb Ward, one half of AI filmmaking duo Curious Refuge, told his YouTube followers he could not wait to get his hands on the tool.
Yet both Ward and Brownlee agreed that it was a massive moment for their industry.
"I can't stress enough how big a deal this is for the filmmaking and creative world," said Ward, who recently went viral with a trailer he created for a Wes Anderson-style Star Wars movie.
OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, said in its announcement that Sora was not yet available to the public.
The announcement did not specify use cases but said "a number of visual artists, designers and filmmakers" had been chosen to help test it.
- 'Like an amoeba' -
The firm accompanied its statement with sample videos including a stylish woman walking along a Tokyo street, a cat waking up its owner in bed, and a group of charging woolly mammoths.
The internet immediately lit up with awe and praise, as is common with OpenAI products.
"I was shocked by their quality," Anis Ayari, an AI engineer and streamer known as Defend Intelligence, told AFP.
He suggested the tool could one day be used to create entirely virtual presenters.
But there were also plenty of dissenters who felt the videos were still firmly stuck in the "uncanny valley", where glitches in otherwise photo-realistic images can leave viewers feeling queasy.
Commentator Ed Zitron wrote that in OpenAI's cat video "the owner's arm appears to be part of the cushion and the cat's paw explodes out of its arm like an amoeba".
He wrote in his newsletter that AI video tools were too expensive and resource-hungry to ever be genuinely useful.
And styles of clips could not be harmonised, making the tools useless for creating anything other than tiny snippets.
- AI fatigue -
Sora enters a marketplace that is heating up, with Google, Stability AI and several other smaller players already in the game.
YouTube itself announced last September it was developing a tool to let creators make AI-generated videos and background pictures.
However, the tools already available have hardly taken the world by storm.
French streamer FibreTigre said he had tried AI video tools but ended his experiment.
He said he was worried about the ethics of using tools trained on other artists' work, and ultimately the programs did not do their job well enough.
"They're just ugly," he said of AI videos.
He said he could see a future where viewers would have a "huge amount of fatigue" with AI and would cherish anything that was not artificial.
I.Meyer--BTB