Short films generated by artificial intelligence are showing up at a growing number of film festivals, with the largest event to date dedicating an entire section to AI-generated films.
The 2024 TriBeCa Film Festival announced Friday that it will host Sora Shorts, a new program featuring five original short films made using OpenAI's text-to-video AI model, Sora. While it's not the first time an AI film has appeared at a major film festival, it is the first time a film made using Sora has been screened.
Sora isn't yet available to the public and is new to even the most experienced AI filmmakers, but OpenAI has granted a group of five directors early access to the program, provided that each director agrees to the filmmaking terms surrounding the AI that were negotiated last year with the DGA, WGA, and SAG-AFTRA unions.
Nikyatou Jousu, director of Sundance Grand Jury Prize-winning “Nanny,” is one of five filmmakers who will screen films made by Sola at the TriBeCa Film Festival on June 15 at the TriBeCa Film Center Screening Room. The other filmmakers are Bonny Discepolo, Ellie Fombi, Reza Sixo Safai and Michaela Ternasky-Holland. All five will participate in a panel discussion following the screening.
Decepolo is known for his work as an actor in Fire Country and Shazam: Fury of the God, some of whose work has screened at TriBeCa, SXSW and Fantastic Fest. Humbi is a Cameroonian-American filmmaker whose debut feature Our Father, the Devil was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award and a Gotham Award. Juss is the director of 2022's The Nanny and is developing a sequel produced by Jordan Peele's Monkeypaw. Cixo Safai is an Iranian-American filmmaker known for his short The Mario Valdez Story and is a producer and co-star of A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night. Ternasky-Holland is a Peabody Award nominee and Emmy Award winner and a leader in the XR and metaverse fields.
“TriBeCa is rooted in the fundamental belief that stories inspire change. Humans need stories to thrive and make sense of our amazing yet broken world,” Jane Rosenthal, co-founder and CEO of TriBeCa Enterprises, said in a statement to press. “These stories could come to us as feature films, immersive experiences, works of art, or even AI-generated short films. We can't wait to see what this incredibly creative group of TriBeCa alumni comes up with.”
“It's amazing to see these filmmakers use Sora to expand their creativity, and we're honored to have their work debut at the TriBeCa Film Festival,” said Brad Lightcap, COO of OpenAI. “We're excited about their short films and look forward to seeing what we can do to make Sora a better tool for all creators.”
While other models can only handle clips six to eight seconds long, Sora can produce videos up to 60 seconds long. It also has unique camera movements, subjects and unique background characters that can interact with others, a strong sense of the surroundings, the ability to see the same scene from different perspectives and different backgrounds, and even the ability to trigger events at different moments. However, it has no audio to enable conversation, no sex or violence, and some argue it lacks the hallucinatory and surreal qualities that characterize other AI text-to-video models.
Sora and OpenAI have been particularly polarizing in recent days: When Sora first demonstrated its ability to generate hyper-realistic imagery (far beyond what other text-based models could produce), Tyler Perry said he was putting an $800 million studio expansion project on hold because he was concerned about how many jobs the technology would eliminate.
OpenAI also recently came under fire from Scarlett Johansson, who claims that CEO Sam Altman (pictured above) approached her to use her voice in the latest ChatGPT model, but when she declined, the company created an eerily similar voice to her. Altman says the voice is not Johansson's or an imitation of her, but rather the natural speaking voice of a hired actress. He also says that the voice of “Sky” was cast before OpenAI approached the “Black Widow” star.
TriBeCa runs from June 5th to 16th.
