Sora 2 Killed the Truth 💀

In February 2024, the media and entertainment industry was rocked by the creation of Sora—OpenAI's AI video creation tool. While it wasn't released publicly until December of last year, early demos were enough to convince filmmaker, Tyler Perry to put a $800M studio expansion on hold. In an interview with the Hollywood Reporter, Perry said, “There’s got to be some sort of regulations in order to protect us. If not, I just don’t see how we survive.”

When I wrote about Sora earlier this year, I was optimistic, thinking that it would allow small creators to compete with large studios. But last week's release of Sora 2 has changed the game again. These latest AI video creation tools not only present an existential threat to Hollywood, but to truth itself.

In case you think I am being hyperbolic, here's a video of the deceased Michael Jackson and Kobe Bryant selling zyns:

While this is was done for demonstration purposes (this is not a real product launch) the implications of this technology are immediate and profound; we can no longer believe our eyes. Here's just a small list of some possible scenarios:

• Ultra-realistic deepfakes driving political chaos.
• Faces and voices cloned into explicit or violent clips.
• Scammers impersonating co-workers or relatives to steal money.
• Stock markets manipulated by fake corporate “announcements.”
• Courts misled by fabricated video evidence.

While OpenAI and Sora 2 operate with guardrails—rules that prevent certain usage—the lesson of DeepSeek is no advancement within the AI space will stay contained for long.

The Future

Based on everything I am seeing, I have no doubt the future will be different than we imagined and AI will be a large part of that. Just this week, Sora hit the top of the charts on the Apple App Store, and fake videos are already flooding the internet. As of writing this email, the top 3 apps on the Apple App Store are GenAI apps:

I've said before that used properly, GenAI can be a lever for growth. And there's no doubt that AI will empower individual creators. But it will also be used to create endless amounts of AI slop and to run scams that would not have been possible just two weeks ago.

At Metal Toad, we’re helping companies use AI responsibly and as technology literate folks, it's incumbent on all of us to pass the word along to people we know so they don't fall victim to scams or worse on the basis of fake videos. The truth is dead, long live the truth!