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OpenAI's New Sora Video Generator To Require Copyright Holders To Opt Out (msn.com) 55

Posted by msmash from the onus-on-everyone-but-them dept.
An anonymous reader shares a report: OpenAI is planning to release a new version of its Sora video generator that creates videos featuring copyrighted material unless copyright holders opt out of having their work appear, according to people familiar with the matter. OpenAI began alerting talent agencies and studios about the forthcoming product and its opt-out process over the last week and plans to release the new version in the coming days, the people said.

The new opt-out process means that movie studios and other intellectual property owners would have to explicitly ask OpenAI not to include their copyrighted material in videos Sora creates. While copyrighted characters will require an opt-out, the new product won't generate images of recognizable public figures without their permission, people familiar with OpenAI's thinking said.
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OpenAI's New Sora Video Generator To Require Copyright Holders To Opt Out More

OpenAI's New Sora Video Generator To Require Copyright Holders To Opt Out

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  • I declare you signed over your rights! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by locater16 ( 2326718 ) on Monday September 29, 2025 @05:04PM (#65691208)
    It's cool that you can just declare things legal now. I declare I am now President of the US unless Donal Trump opts out within the next 30 seconds! Ok he didn't cool, for my first dictat- executive order sorry, I declare clowns illegal.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Guignol ( 159087 )
      Why did you have to resort to those shady ways to get into position ?
      You should have told us from the beginning that you would declare clowns illegal, you would have won easily and have popular support too !

  • If my picture happens to appear in the training data but I'm not a public figure, I still don't want my face to show up in any generated results.

  • unless OpenAI opt out? No I think they would call that theft,

  • In practice, the most common prompt will be "make me a video featuring a character that looks almost exactly like without violating copyright
    Does the created character need to be identical to be a violation?
    How small a change is required to make it acceptable?
    Is the law clear on the issue?
    Will AI be the judge?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Sebby ( 238625 )

      Will AI be the judge?

      The 'judge' is whomever can be bought.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by whitroth ( 9367 )

      Right. Nope. It will be "make a nude pic of x", with no reference to copyright, etc. Do you really imagine most people will think of copyright?

  • Announcement: Beginning today, each employee and contractor of OpenAI owes me $5USD every minute, unless they opt-out.

    Thank you for you attention to this matter.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Can we all agree Altman is a scamming piece of shit?

      (Posting as anonymous because Skynet will come after us all in 2047.)

      • (Posting as anonymous because Skynet will come after us all in 2047.)

        Slashdot readers aren't the ones you need to worry about. And the folks you DO need to be careful of, already know who you are.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Sebby ( 238625 )

        Can we all agree Altman is a scamming piece of shit?

        I think we can all agree it's a piece of shit, and a rapist of content producers, as well as a privacy rapist (just like Facebook/Meta[stasize]).

  • Property Crush (Score:5, Informative)

    by Pseudonymous Powers ( 4097097 ) on Monday September 29, 2025 @05:16PM (#65691228)
    That's not how copyright works! That's not how any of this works!
    • I think they have been confused into thinking that YouTube's model, where third parties may create videos with infringing content and then upload them, will work for them despite the fact that in their case it is them creating the infringing content and uploading it. Still, I expect the incoming deluge of strongly worded legal letters from extremely well paid corporate lawyers will correct this confusion.

      • It's probably a calculation of "Does OpenAI have more money for lawyers than the big studios do?" The answer might be "Yes."

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by allo ( 1728082 )

          The answer might be "The big studios want an agreement that results in as much money as they can get" and not that they want to destroy OpenAI. They can make much more money by OpenAI paying them, in particular when OpenAI finds a business model that allows them to keep paying in the future.

    • That's not how copyright works! That's not how any of this works!

      That's also not how the US presidency works - yet here we are.

    • Not how copyright works (Score:4, Interesting)

      by umopapisdn69 ( 6522384 ) on Monday September 29, 2025 @05:58PM (#65691368)
      (IANAL) Exactly how I've always understood it. A creator OPTS IN to copyright by attaching copyright notice when they publish. It is an opt-in because you do have to assert it. If OpenAI "takes" a copy, removes the copyright, and republishes, then they commit a crime. Similarly they commit a crime if they republish WITH the copyright notice but fail to get consent. Unless their publication conforms to "fair use". (Which is where murkiness comes in.) It's just a slightly different crime. They don't just get to declare their use to be "fair use" without qualifying. Unless Trump says they can.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by HiThere ( 15173 )

        That used to be the case. Now you automatically get copyright whether you want to or not. I forget which law (or possibly intentional treaty) changed that.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by _merlin ( 160982 )

          The Berne Convention is what you're thinking of.

          • It took place in 1886, so while the previous commenter may be technically correct to say that it “used to be the case”, it is unlikely that anyone here has personal experience of the prior state of affairs.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by _merlin ( 160982 )

              Although the Berne Convention was ratified in 1887 in its original form, there were only ten parties to it (Belgium, France, Germany, Haiti, Italy, Liberia, Spain, Switzerland, Tunisia, United Kingdom), and it took a long time for countries to actually implement it. The UK only fully implemented it over a hundred years later with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

              The US only adopted Berne Convention copyright in 1988, with the law coming into force in 1989 (Berne Convention Implementation Act of

  • This sounds like an exit plan (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ebunga ( 95613 ) on Monday September 29, 2025 @05:18PM (#65691234)

    "Oh no, we were sued into oblivion by Big Content, and it's not because we were selling something that didn't really do what it says on the tin and most people realize they don't really want after the novelty wears away."

  • Sign up for my opt out program (Score:3)

    by OrangeTide ( 124937 ) on Monday September 29, 2025 @05:33PM (#65691280) Homepage Journal

    I'll be selling your house next year and keeping the proceeds for myself, but if you don't want me to you can write me a letter stating so. It's simple!

  • I have never liked the "mother may I" copyright system. What matters is that creators receive compensation, not that creators have total control. The control was supposed to be nothing more than a lever for authors to obtain payment.

    But as usual, commercial interests have confused the issues to construe them to their advantage. Copyright is more powerful and controlling when it is their work, and less powerful when it is someone else's work.

  • Good idea (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I think I will start requiring copyright holders to opt out from me using their content however I want from now on.

  • How is that even legal (Score:3)

    by PoopMelon ( 10494390 ) on Monday September 29, 2025 @06:28PM (#65691420)
    You cannot be considered to be opted in without your conscent. Why is not everyone suing?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by pz ( 113803 )

      You cannot be considered to be opted in without your conscent. Why is not everyone suing?

      It's hard to imagine that their stance will survive legal challenge, but with essentially infinite money, they must have good lawyers who have done the relevant risk analyses.

      One aspect of which I can imaging being that once they have trained on copyrighted work, it's effectively impossible to *untrain* the network, so they might be required to pay some modest royalty, but will be able to argue that it is technically / financially infeasible to remove said material.

      • If you build a product that uses a patent that you do not own nor have licensed, you are banned from selling it or I think even using it. The only recurse you have is to build it without infringing or getting a license.. As to "Financially infeasible", OpenAI could NOT make that as a credible argument. Technically, it is very easy, before you feed the cesspool of the web, dvds, cds and illegal pdfs into your 1GW pile of polluted silicon, make sure you have legal permission regarding "All rights reserved. N

  • I don't see a mechanism for the little guy to 'opt out'...case in point: I have a popular youtube channel, I don't want OpenAI harvesting it without compensation. How do individual social media accounts opt out? Sounds like they are just negotiating with major studios at high levels. Aren't they scraping social media as well still?

    • I don't know YouTube's terms by heart, but I'd guess by uploading your videos, you gave them something like a "perpetual non-exclusive license" to distribute your work commercially (ads, etc.). In that case, OpenAI would only have to negotiate with YouTube -- you already agreed to whatever YouTube decides to do with your uploads.
  • Once some company sent a book to me. If I kept it, it meant I bought it and would have to pay. I could send it back for free.
    Checked the law. It was covered. I did not have to pay or return anything.
    Looks like chatgpt got inspired by the wrong people. Should have checked their plan with chatgpt. Pretty sure it would point out that the plan is bad.

  • These criminals need to be stopped and made to pay in full for their crimes.

  • This could be a real win for lawyers, mega billable hours as heavyweights slug it out. I suspect the opt-out agreement includes text the studios won't agree to , perhaps an agreement not t sue and allow use of material already used.

  • It seems any opt-out rights given to copyright holders is in addition to existing rights.

    Consider that right now I can draw a picture of Mickey Mouse on a pogo stick. Should drawing be illegal by itself?
    I can ask nano-banana to draw It, and it looks good.
    But I don't own the copyright, so I don't think I'm even allowed to show it to you, unless it is for some sort of fair use. I certainly cannot sell it on T-shirts.

    Try the same prompt with ChatGPT, and you get "I can’t create or edit an image of Micke

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by quenda ( 644621 )

      P.S. I got ChatGPT to agree that a Steamboat Willie version of Mickey mouse would be OK, as copyright has expired.
      It tried to generate it for me, but then hit an error:
      "This image generation request did not follow our content policy."

  • And yet they are still in business, something extremely fishy here. It's like the movie studios are complicit. IT'S A TRAP for the end user.
  • Sora could only generate something resembling copyrighted content if it was explicitly trained on it. So agencies that didn't give permission to that have nothing to worry about.
  • People should just steal their stuff—of course, they are free to tell specific burglars and hackers that Sora wants to opt out of their attacks.

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