On Monday, Toys "R" Us announced that it had partnered with an ad agency called Native Foreign to create what it calls "the first-ever brand film using OpenAI's new text-to-video tool, Sora." OpenAI debuted Sora in February, but the video synthesis tool has not yet become available to the public. The brand film tells the story of Toys "R" Us founder Charles Lazarus using AI-generated video clips.
"We are thrilled to partner with Native Foreign to push the boundaries of Sora, a groundbreaking new technology from OpenAI that's gaining global attention," wrote Toys "R" Us on its website. "Sora can create up to one-minute-long videos featuring realistic scenes and multiple characters, all generated from text instruction. Imagine the excitement of creating a young Charles Lazarus, the founder of Toys "R" Us, and envisioning his dreams for our iconic brand and beloved mascot Geoffrey the Giraffe in the early 1930s."
Previously on SoylentNews:
Tyler Perry Puts $800 Million Studio Expansion on Hold Because of OpenAI's Sora - 20240225
OpenAI Teases a New Generative Video Model Called Sora - 20240222
Toys 'R' Us Files for Bankruptcy Protection in US - 20170919 (Toys 'R' Us is a "zombie brand" now. The entity in Canada was and is separate and still exists.)
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Toys 'R' Us has filed for bankruptcy protection in the US and Canada as it attempts to restructure its debts.
The firm was once a dominant player in the US toy market, but has struggled against larger rivals such as Amazon.
The move casts a shadow over the future of the company's nearly 1,600 stores and 64,000 employees.
The firm's European operations are not part of the bankruptcy proceedings and Toys R Us says it does not expect any immediate impact on its UK stores.
Toys R Us's operations in Australia, about 255 licensed stores and a joint venture partnership in Asia are also not included in the bankruptcy move.
[...] The bankruptcy filing is more evidence that traditional retailers are struggling in the US, as online retailers continue to capture market share.
Amazon marches on, or we're just at 'Peak Toy'?
OpenAI teases an amazing new generative video model called Sora [technologyreview.com]:
OpenAI has built a striking new generative video model called Sora that can take a short text description and turn it into a detailed, high-definition film clip up to a minute long.
Based on four sample videos that OpenAI shared with MIT Technology Review ahead of today's announcement, the San Francisco–based firm has pushed the envelope of what's possible with text-to-video generation (a hot new research direction that we flagged as a trend to watch in 2024).
"We think building models that can understand video, and understand all these very complex interactions of our world, is an important step for all future AI systems," says Tim Brooks, a scientist at OpenAI.
[...] Impressive as they are, the sample videos shown here were no doubt cherry-picked to show Sora at its best. Without more information, it is hard to know how representative they are of the model's typical output.
It may be some time before we find out. OpenAI's announcement of Sora today is a tech tease, and the company says it has no current plans to release it to the public. Instead, OpenAI will today begin sharing the model with third-party safety testers for the first time.
In particular, the firm is worried about the potential misuses [technologyreview.com] of fake but photorealistic video [technologyreview.com]. "We're being careful about deployment here and making sure we have all our bases covered before we put this in the hands of the general public," says Aditya Ramesh, a scientist at OpenAI, who created the firm's text-to-image model DALL-E [technologyreview.com].
But OpenAI is eyeing a product launch sometime in the future. As well as safety testers, the company is also sharing the model with a select group of video makers and artists to get feedback on how to make Sora as useful as possible to creative professionals. "The other goal is to show everyone what is on the horizon, to give a preview of what these models will be capable of," says Ramesh.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter published Thursday, filmmaker Tyler Perry spoke about his concerns related to the impact of AI video synthesis on entertainment industry jobs. In particular, he revealed that he has suspended a planned $800 million expansion of his production studio after seeing what OpenAI's recently announced AI video generator Sora can do.
"I have been watching AI very closely," Perry said in the interview. "I was in the middle of, and have been planning for the last four years... an $800 million expansion at the studio, which would've increased the backlot a tremendous size—we were adding 12 more soundstages. All of that is currently and indefinitely on hold because of Sora and what I'm seeing. I had gotten word over the last year or so that this was coming, but I had no idea until I saw recently the demonstrations of what it's able to do. It's shocking to me."
[...] "It makes me worry so much about all of the people in the business," he told The Hollywood Reporter. "Because as I was looking at it, I immediately started thinking of everyone in the industry who would be affected by this, including actors and grip and electric and transportation and sound and editors, and looking at this, I'm thinking this will touch every corner of our industry."
You can read the full interview at The Hollywood Reporter
[...] Perry also looks beyond Hollywood and says that it's not just filmmaking that needs to be on alert, and he calls for government action to help retain human employment in the age of AI. "If you look at it across the world, how it's changing so quickly, I'm hoping that there's a whole government approach to help everyone be able to sustain."
Previously on SoylentNews:
OpenAI Teases a New Generative Video Model Called Sora - 20240222
(Score: 2, Disagree) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday July 02, @01:22PM (4 children)
Toys R Us is still relevant today? Or, is AI supposed to make them relevant again?
Oh yeah - WTF is a "brand film"? No film is used here. What's wrong with the term "video", instead of "film", "footage" and other outdated terms holding over from old technology? It annoys me every time I see those terms improperly used, because it demonstrates how ignorant people are of technology. No film, no number of feet of film, nothing. You've adopted new technology, use appropriate terms for it.
And, finally,
Wow. Sora is ready for the Big Time, and the Big Screen, right? One minute videos? Children could do that with nothing more than a sheaf of paper and crayons when I was a kid.
https://youtu.be/uEx5dYn45kU?t=102 [youtu.be] (don't waste time on the first minute of the video, unless you really like silly)
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday July 02, @02:26PM
"Toys R Us" in the USA is like RadioShack in the USA. Yes, the went broke, yes their brand was sold to someone. No, they aren't the same as they used to be.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Tuesday July 02, @08:52PM (2 children)
They are recording analogue TV signals on magnetic tape? No? Then why do you think "video" is in any way more applicable than "film"?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday July 02, @09:19PM
Video recording seems exactly proper for digital recordings of what I see. How does video suggest, or require, that any magnetic tape be used? If magnetic tape were in use, the term 'footage' would still be justified, would it not?
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 2) by SomeGuy on Wednesday July 03, @02:22PM
"Video" was the term used to describe visual information transmitted over radio rather than just audio.
The term stuck when recording devices, playback devices, and home computers became popular, even though no broadcasting or transmission was involved.
Now days everything is in teh cloudz and transmitted over the air to cell phones. So it is still the same thing, just infinitely more stupid.
The use of the term "film" by this ad agency is what, in the industry, is called "bullshitting". Companies and people do this all the time to make things sound fancy when they are not.
The entire idea is that using magical glorious "AI" stuffed full of the uncredited hard work of actual people, advertising agencies can now rapidly shit out low quality custom video advertisements. This is somehow a good, fancy, new thing and, like it or not, you will learn to love it.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 02, @03:20PM (1 child)
Looks like Mr. Lazarus was dreaming for a decade or two? Or someone's lying...
From tfs,
> creating a young Charles Lazarus, the founder of Toys "R" Us, and envisioning his dreams for our iconic brand and beloved mascot Geoffrey the Giraffe in the early 1930s."
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toys_%22R%22_Us [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Freeman on Tuesday July 02, @05:56PM
Maybe it was his childhood dream to create a toy store. In any event, hallucinated facts is what Generative AI does best.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Username on Tuesday July 02, @05:08PM (1 child)
To generate that 60 seconds of video?
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday July 02, @06:02PM
Probably less time than it took the armies of Disney artists to create their hand drawn animations, when they were doing exclusively hand drawn animations. Also, it was noted that it wasn't purely AI generated. So . . . ? I would guess that the actual amount of time it took for Sora to create the video wasn't very long. It takes a couple of minutes to generate a small image on a laptop with CPU only rendering. I would imagine that Sora is using something even more powerful than a typical consumer PC with top of the line consumer GPU. I would be surprised, if Sora took longer than a few hours to generate a 60 second clip.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 4, Touché) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Wednesday July 03, @06:27AM (1 child)
AI is touted to be the singlemost important creation in the history of mankind, and all it's used for (and probably only good at at this point) is creating deepfake porn, fake Amazon reviews, bad GitHub code and... you guessed it of course, advertisement.
Color me unsurprised.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 03, @11:27AM
> ... the singlemost important creation in the history of mankind,
Can we create a list of former "singlemost important creations"?
+ I'll start off with "Ginger", which was later revealed to be the Segway. Then the company was sold. A bit later, from BBC, "The millionaire owner of the Segway company has died after falling from cliffs while riding one of his firm's motorised scooters. Jimi Heselden, 62, crashed into the River Wharfe while riding the vehicle round his estate in Thorp Arch, Boston Spa, West Yorkshire, on Sunday. He was pronounced dead at the scene."