grandma is cooked

Bonjour,

A healthy reminder for us all:

We’ll be in Menlo Park on Tuesday for our livestream. HMU if you want to be on the show and are local to the area.

ily,

Writer: Natasha 
Editor: Miranda

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This week, OpenAI launched Sora, an app built around its latest text-to-video model that feels a lot like a Shein version of TikTok. Users can create, remix, and scroll through short AI videos, inserting their own likeness with a feature called ‘cameos.’

Here’s how it works: you upload a video of yourself, then set permissions for who can use your likeness.

Then you’re able to prompt it and drop yourself into AI-generated scenes that include dialogue, sound effects, and background audio.

Once I set up my profile and was met with a blank canvas of opportunity, I realized that when almost anything is possible, nothing feels that interesting. I prompted it to show me making a salad, and the results were mixed.

There’s an argument to be made that the availability and democratization of creative tools open up a world of possibilities for a new creative class to emerge. But what’s missing from that argument is that constraints are essential to creative flourishing.

Without them, we’re left with a feed that mostly looks like this:
cat
anime
dog + cat
michael jackson
sam altman
sam altman
sam atlman
cat

And with that, we’re seeing a first-mover opportunity to take those cat videos, remove the Sora watermark, and build an audience on TikTok.

Outside of whether these tools will be a net good for creativity online, the greater fear is that the veil between what’s real and fake on our feeds grows thinner every day and some might argue that’s highly strategic.

Sorry to be such a downer, but one thing I do know for sure is that our grandparents on Facebook are absolutely cooked, and Thanksgiving this year is going to be an absolute bloodbath.

I’m hopeful that we’ll find new constraints for these tools, and that this will eventually allow more people to participate, not just consume.

Just so long as we stay away from him.