In a world where AI is constantly improving, a new tool has entered the stage.
Sora AI is a newly developed AI tool that can generate a realistic or animated video from a text prompt or image.
On the surface, it seems revolutionary: creating entire scenes, shorts, or even feature-length animations without the need for an entire team.
For some, like an independent animator trying to create their own series, this sounds like a dream come true. Sora AI has the potential to streamline workflow, assist overworked artists and help with the workload for independent creators.
But what happens to the animators working for animation studios, workers who are already known for being underpaid, overworked, and often burned out?
Now, with tools like Sora AI becoming more capable by the day, their jobs could be on the chopping block. Big studios and corporations won’t hesitate to cut costs by replacing skilled labor with AI, allowing them to pump out soulless and cheap content.
Thankfully, right now Sora AI is far from perfect. Its outputs, while impressive, are clearly artificial and not yet comparable to high-end animation seen in major films, shows, or anime.
But what happens in 10 or 20 years, when AI generated animation becomes indistinguishable from human-made art?
This isn’t just a technical issue—it’s a philosophical one.
If machines can replicate an animator’s style with a few prompts, what happens to the soul of animation?
Will creative arts start to lose their meaning?
Can we truly call it “art” if it’s generated by a model trained on the work of others?
Sora AI also raises serious legal and ethical questions.
Where is it learning to animate from? Like many generative AI tools, it’s more than likely trained on massive datasets scraped from the internet including copyrighted works from real artists, without their knowledge or consent.
Is it unethical to mimic a particular animator’s style without credit or compensation? Should it be legal? With AI constantly improving how will laws be able to keep up?
As this technology evolves, it is very important that the laws keep up and be able to govern these AI tools.
Governments and creative unions will need to grapple with how to protect artists, prevent exploitation, and ensure that human creativity isn’t erased in favor of corporate profit.
