Since I can't use the app itself, I thought I'll do a breakdown of what I can actually see - the app icon, it looks simple at first glance but it packs a lot if we can deconstruct it. I'm doing this breakdown as a fun exercise in design appreciation, I know my breakdown will probably not going to align with the authorial intent behind it. If you like this breakdown please share it, now let's dive in.
Outrage spread Monday over President Trump's effort to mock the huge No Kings protests over the weekend by posting an AI video of himself dumping waste on demonstrators. Supporters of the sprawling rallies that drew millions slammed Trump for posting the 18-second clip depicting him wearing a crown and piloting a KING TRUMP warplane over some of the sprawling crowds that gathered on Saturday to protest his hardline second term in power.
Trump posted the video to his Truth Social on Saturday during the No Kings protests that attracted a reported seven million Americans to approximately 2,600 rallies across the country. Trump's video portrayed him wearing a crown and flying a fighter jet with King Trump on the side, to the tune of Danger Zone from the Top Gun soundtrack. In the 19-second clip, the animation pulled out to show the plane bombing New York City with a payload full of excrement.
The worry, even among marketers, is that these tools aren't ushering in a new creative renaissance - they're accelerating a race to the bottom. Volume over value. Engagement over a meaning. A feed full of something that looks like content but isn't saying much at all.
Within hours of Sora 2's, release, though, many of the videos populating the feed and spilling over to older social media platforms depicted copyrighted characters in compromising situations as well as graphic scenes of violence and racism. OpenAI's own terms of service for Sora as well as ChatGPT's image or text generation prohibit content that promotes violence or, more broadly, causes harm.
Sora's launch-complete with a TikTok style "for you" page-was something of an about-face for Altman, who had previously described social media feeds as "an example of misaligned AI," whose algorithms "are incredible at getting you to keep scrolling." Altman was quick to distance OpenAI from suggestions that it had caved to the temptation to create what he called an AI-powered "slop feed."
OpenAI's back-to-back announcements continue a trend, as CEO Sam Altman's artificial intelligence company makes pages of tech news all on its own. The company's pedal is to the floor: ChatGPT recently hit 700 million weekly users, the company is planning an utterly massive infrastructure buildout for its AI tools, and Altman has even set his sights, albeit vaguely, on the device business.
Almost exactly a year ago, it announced a bold partnership with the AI startup Runway to develop a new model capable of generating "cinematic video" exclusively for Lionsgate to use. In return, the studio gave the firm unrestricted access to its treasure trove of movies - which include everything from the "Hunger Games" films to "American Psycho" - to train the AI model.