OpenAI Sora as an "iPhone Moment"

Sora is OpenAI’s new cutting-edge and possibly disruptive AI model that can generate realistic videos based on textual descriptions. 

Perhaps it is not too soon to make an analogy to what we now call the “iPhone moment.” 

The phrase "iPhone moment" is used to describe a pivotal event, product launch, or technological advancement that significantly impacts a particular field or industry, as was the iPhone’s shift to touch screen interface in 2007, where prior smartphones had used keyboards. 

An "iPhone moment" might be characterized as one that:

• introduces a novel technology, feature, or design that significantly changes how things are done and therefore is disruptive

• has a profound impact on the way people use technology and becomes widely adopted and impactful

• creates a new paradigm or sets a new standard for the industry, influencing future developments.

Prior such moments might include:

• the invention of the internet

• the World Wide Web and multimodal media (video, graphics, image and sound plus text)

• social media platforms

• cloud computing

Sora and other text-to-image (TTI) and text-to-video (TTV) models are likely to be a significant turning point in how we interact and consume information, similar to the way the multimedia web expanded the internet beyond text-only interfaces. 

Some examples of other text-to-video platforms include:

• Runway Gen-2: This platform, available on web and mobile, allows users to create short videos from text descriptions. It offers various customization options and editing tools.

• Google AI's Lumiere: Released as an extension to the PyTorch framework, Lumiere focuses on generating high-quality 3D animations from textual prompts.

• Make-A-Scene: While not exclusively text-based, this AI tool allows users to create and manipulate scenes using natural language descriptions, offering a different approach to video generation.

• Imagen Video: This research project from Google AI demonstrates the ability to generate longer and more complex video sequences from text descriptions, showcasing potential future advancements.

Other examples of text-to-image platforms include:

• Midjourney: This platform offers stunningly realistic and detailed images generated from text prompts, with a strong focus on artistic expression.

• DALL-E 2: OpenAI's counterpart to Midjourney, DALL-E 2 is known for its creative and often surreal interpretations of text descriptions.

• Imagen: A Tencent project with the same name as Google’s Imagen

• VQGAN+CLIP: This open-source project allows users to experiment and create their own text-to-image models, fostering accessibility and exploration within the field.

As did prior “iPhone moments,” Sora and other text-to-video platforms will democratize content creation. As the multimedia web and broadband internet access enabled YouTube, realistic gaming, video streaming, video advertising; ridesharing; turn-by-turn navigation on a smartphone; video calling and all “rich media” including the future metaverse, so Sora and other text-to-video platforms could create new industries, firms and use cases. 

Sora is a major advance in user-generated and professionally-created content that might rival earlier changes wrought by the multimedia web; the internet; home broadband; smartphones and mobile broadband. 

As with those earlier changes, major changes could happen to legacy practices, industries and behaviors. As the smartphone replaced cameras, watches, GPS devices, video screens and home phones, so might TTI and TTV platforms reshape existing industries, firms, products and behaviors.