OpenAI’s character cameos will let you put pets and original personas in Sora videos

OpenAI has rolled out the capability to create character cameos of your pets, doodles, original personas or even objects in the Sora app, which you can put in your videos. You can start the process by going to your profile page in the Sora app, tapping on the “Create cameo” button and then uploading a video of the character (or pet) you want the model to generate. The company says just a few seconds of footage are enough, and you can even use old Sora-generated videos as reference.

You can then give your character a display name and describe how you want the model to animate it. In the example OpenAI uploaded, for instance, the description for a wicked green witch character reads: “She glides with a mysterious, whimsical grace, speaks in rhymes when casting spells, and her pointed hat always tilts as if listening to secrets on the wind.” You can choose permissions for each character you create. Under the “Who can use this” permissions section, you can choose between several options: Only me, People I approve, Mutuals, Everyone and Everyone (excluding specific sets of users). Whenever you want to generate a Sora video with a cameo in it, you can just tag a specific character.

Sora 2 launched with a cameo feature that lets you create an avatar of yourself, but this is a new application of the capability. Cameo, the app that allows users to buy videos from celebrities, just sued OpenAI over trademark violation by using the “cameo” name. It said that OpenAI’s use of the word is likely to cause consumer confusion and dilute its brand. OpenAI disagreed “that anyone can claim exclusive ownership over the word ‘cameo.'”

In addition to character cameos, OpenAI has introduced “stitching,” allowing you to stitch several clips together and connect videos. There’s now also a leaderboard that shows the most cameod and most remixed videos.