Sora and (Video) Marketing - The Good, The Bad, The Ugly...

And the inevitable.

I sometimes wished I had more noble pursuits. Some kind of world peace, or the end of hunger. Something more tangible, something my parents can use to brag to their friends about.

To be a marketer and to speak against consumerism, manipulation, and data abuse can sometimes feel like I'm a pyromaniac masquerading as a firefighter.

Am I helping solve the problems I talk about, or am I amplifying them?

As you continue to read this article remember that the ethos behind Human to Humans marketing is to prove that we can align corporate and sales goals with customer and societal goals. It doesn't have to be all. It doesn't have to be nothing. Making money isn't bad, manipulating others in order to get it, is.

When Open AI revealed Sora - an AI model that can create video from text - my first reaction was to go outside, touch some grass, a tree, and throw myself into a volcano.

The dust hasn't even begin to settle on ChatGPT, DALL-E, MidJourney & Co. and now another monkey wrench was thrown into a barely standing mix.

It doesn't matter how many times you've read Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order, What We Owe the Future, and Homo Deus - nobody truly knows what's to come. We keep hitting one unprecedented time after another.

Even Ray Dalio, who's dedicated his life to understanding history and how man repeats it, said:

"At this time, humanity is evolving its ways of thinking and increasing productivity in more dramatic ways than ever before. We are doing this through the development of artificial intelligence [...] Humanity is essentially creating an alternative species that has enormous capacity to see past patterns and process many different ideas very quickly, has little or no common sense, has trouble understanding logic behind relationships and doesn't have emotions. This species is simultaneously smart and stupid, helpful and dangerous. It offers great potential and needs to be well-controlled and not blindly followed."

If you only remember one thing after reading this article, it should be this - it's close to impossible to predict how text-to-video will change our life, work, and world, but if Sora's predeceasing technologies can be used as a guide (and I don't see why they wouldn't) the only thing we know with absolute certainty is that this technology will continue to get better, faster than we think.

Sora and Video Marketing - The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

THE GOOD?

Cheaper Video Production at Scale

Expect significant savings on video production costs, from hiring personnel to renting equipment and editing. An obvious use case here is B-roll - if nothing else, you will have ample filler content for your videos. I suspect stock video platforms will incorporate Sora with their services like they did with photos.

This may also be a point in favor of sustainability. Yes, running Sora will take ample processing power, however, it will also reduce the need for physical resources, lowering the carbon footprint associated with traditional video productions.

Speed to Market

You could leverage Sora to rapidly produce and deploy marketing campaigns in response to market trends - something that only large corporations with deep marketing budgets are currently able to do. You will also have the freedom to test outlandish ideas without too many financial repercussions.

E-commerce Product Visualizations

While it's unclear how Sora will work with branded products (currently DALL-E doesn't generate any kind of branded imagery) and whether or not you will be able to upload your own products and manipulate them in editing. Videos created by Sora could dramatically impact the online shopping experience, allowing your customers to better visualize products before purchasing.

Human Avatars + Sora

Again, it's unclear whether or not you would be able to upload your own products/human avatars (like Render) when creating these videos - I suspect we'll be able to do so in the coming year/s. For anyone with a public-facing persona that relies on video, this could be a game changer.

You could, in theory, use ChatGPT to write a script for your avatar, that you could then upload in Sora to create videos of yourself bungee jumping off the Eiffel Tower while selling life insurance - all from the comfort of your sofa.

I can also easily imagine new forms of collaborations, with influencers and other celebrities selling or renting their avatar for various projects and brand deals.

Richer Content Experience

Videos provide a richer content experience compared to text alone. By integrating videos that are relevant and add value to your written content, you can cater to different learning styles and preferences, making your website/social media more appealing and informative to a broader audience. In other words, if you're not already using video, Sora may make it easier for you to do so.

Personalized Advertising

I suspect that paid media platforms (like Meta and Google) will trip over themselves to integrate Sora. Creating hyper-personalized video ads tailored to individual user preferences seems like the next obvious step. This would allow marketers to create campaigns that adapt to the viewer's interests, demographics, and past interactions with the brand.

Imagine an online retailer producing thousands of video ads automatically, each tailored to showcase products based on the viewer's browsing history or purchase behavior. In other words, you could create videos emphasizing unique selling propositions according to your customer profiles.

Customer Service and Education

Brands can use Sora to create personalized video responses to customer service inquiries or to produce educational content that addresses specific questions or concerns. This approach could vastly improve customer satisfaction and engagement, offering a more interactive and personal touch than text-based responses. This partly hinges on the ability to add branded content or have some video editing abilities.

THE BAD

Homogenization and Content Inflation

With easier synthetic content creation there will also be a loss of emotional nuance and the value of individual pieces will diminish.

I remember when DALL-E came out and, for a few short months, we were all enamored by its capabilities. It didn't take the world too long to start looking at AI images as the new stock images. I suspect something similar will happen here, there's a strong potential for Sora to trigger a sea of similar-looking videos, increasing fatigue for this type of "art" and reducing brand distinctiveness.

Overreliance on Algorithms

A few weeks ago I posted on LinkedIn about CosmoTV and how his YouTube channel surpassed MrBeast as Januarys' fastest-growing YouTube channel. This means Cosmo TV has found an even more effective way to "work with" YouTube's algorithm. Their optimization secret was to record a video of a phone playing a YouTube Short that’s already massively popular, then switch over to a sensory app to fill out the last few seconds.

This desire to game the "algo" is already the norm, and I suspect it will only increase in cadence. I also wonder if decision-making will be skewed towards what the AI can generate well, potentially stifling creativity and homogenizing content (see point above.)

Reduced Human Employment and Skill Degradation

As more creators and brands produce video content there will be more competition. Somewhat ironically, there will also be fewer opportunities for videographers, editors, and other creative professionals. Many artists will suffer financially and will be forced to find new ways to monetize their talent.

I guess that there will also be an overall decline in traditional content creation skills among marketers and creators. And while I doubt anyone will cry over a diminishing of marketers in the world, having some humans working in these positions ensures there are guardrails in place that would stop AI from over-manipulating customers into a sale.

Audience Distrust

I plan on focusing on creating a whole piece on online distrust, so will keep this short. Thanks to social media everything online already looks staged and unreal, this problem will only be exacerbated with Sora. As AI-generated videos become indistinguishable from real footage, skepticism will only continue to grow (also see conclusion.)

THE UGLY

Porn.

Misinformation and Deepfakes

As Sora and similar technologies evolve, the marketing industry will need to confront the challenge of deepfakes and misinformation. Brands will (hopefully) have a responsibility to ensure their use of AI-generated content is transparent and ethical, potentially leading to new standards and practices in digital marketing (blessing in disguise?) that prioritize authenticity and trust. #brainmade #humanmade

To note: misinformation isn't new, but the change in how we distribute media is.

Ethical Dilution and Social Manipulation

As we keep giving our data away to these LLM, there will be A LOT of potential to exploit personal data and use it to create hyper-personalized content for manipulative marketing practices. Not to mention the perpetuation of existing stereotypes and biases in marketing content (e.g., body image issues for women, unhealthy foods for teens, addictive substances for men)

One of my biggest concerns is that there will be a gradual acceptance of questionable marketing practices as AI-generated content becomes the norm.

Echo Chambers

I wrote in the past about the inevitability of us living in a highly personalized internet bubble. I suspect that as we become more reliant on various AI agents, we will grow an increasingly narrower view of the world. This, in turn, will only continue to polarize and make us more fearful of people dissimilar to us.

Misinformation will inevitably be used to threaten the commonality we have as people - something that is already happening today, just at a larger scale, more effectively.

Regulatory Law

I want to first acknowledge that from the looks of it, the EU is trying to grab this bull by the horns. The US is not really trying, because... money.

Regardless, legal systems are already struggling to keep pace with the ethical and copyright implications of AI-generated content. I don't imagine this changing any time soon.

I touched quite a bit of grass while thinking about Sora and its implications. And while I tried to go against my usual instincts and look at the glass half empty as half full, I simply can't have uncritical faith in technological progress.

Looking at social media, I don't know if we're in a position to build AI the right way.

I remember when the world collectively lost its mind and OpenAI took over every headline all over the world. Sam Altman, as the face of AI, took it upon himself and paraded around news outlets and podcasts to reassure everyone that they're building ChatGPT slowly and responsibly, "we want the world to catch up" he said. He even paid lip service to politicians and asked to be regulated - only to later complain about being regulated.

First it was building slowly, now it's building fast.
First it was a non-profit, now it's a (capped) profit company.
First it was open, now it's closed.

Very few people will choose morals over financial wealth and power, Sam Altman & Co. are no different. Most of the people in tech (or any other lucrative niche) will continue to sweep unethical behavior under the rug as long as they are making money. Let's not be naive.

The paradise of technological utopia keeps growing with Sora. And unfortunately, consumerism and technological arrogance are already deeply embedded in our markets and financial system.

"The future is bright, but you might get fired, have your digital identity stolen, and distrust everything you see online" - is this good enough?

If there is one thing we know with absolute certainty, it's that this technology will continue to evolve. Not because of some sort of moral drive to improve "humanity" and the imminent climate catastrophes we're galloping towards, but because today's society seems to follow a new creed, one that venerates 'Profit at All Costs.'

Its temples are the Silicon Valleys and Wall Streets around the globe, where devotees chant the mantra of 'scale faster, grow larger,' hoping for blessings in the form of exponential curves and skyrocketing stock prices.

My final prediction.

There will be a moment when the internet will become so unreliable, so homogenized and so synthetical, that we will inevitably start going offline. All of the AI agents we're currently building will assist us in doing just that. What was once a source for connection and entertainment, will become a tool like any other.

I agree with

Rachel Haywire

, offline will become the new online.

And I am very much looking forward to that.

What do you think?

What type of changes will Sora trigger?
Will you use it?

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