TriBeCa Film Festival to Screen Five Films Made with OpenAI’s Sora

• The TriBeCa Festival will be screening five short films made with OpenAI’s Sora on June 15th.
• The filmmakers were given early access to Sora and produced their film in just a few weeks.
• Creators who have used it say it has facilitated the artistic process.

The generative AI will make its debut at the TriBeCa Film Festival, the 20-year-old New York film festival founded by actor Robert De Niro.

The TriBeCa Film Festival, in collaboration with OpenAI, will premiere five short films created using artificial intelligence on June 15. This marks the first time that OpenAI’s text-to-video conversion tool, Sora, will be featured at the festival.

According to a statement from the festival, the filmmakers (all of whom are festival alumni) have pledged to abide by the AI-related terms established in contracts signed last year with directors, actors and screenwriters from the film industry: They were educated on OpenAI’s tools, given early access to Sora and the freedom to produce their videos independently, and were asked to complete their projects in just a few weeks.

“Stories come to us as feature films, immersive experiences, works of art or AI-generated short films, and we can’t wait to see what these incredibly creative TriBeCa alumni create,” said Jane Rosenthal, co-founder and CEO of TriBeCa Enterprises.

OpenAI introduced Sora in February to “understand and simulate the movement of the physical world.” The tool is not yet available to the public, but OpenAI claims it can generate up to one minute of video from text.

Some Hollywood veterans initially saw it as a threat; filmmaker Tyler Perry paused plans for an $800 million studio expansion after seeing Sora’s capabilities. But creators who have had access to it since say it has improved their creative process, letting them communicate abstract concepts more clearly and visualize ideas in new ways. And they don’t feel like they’re irreplaceable.