Talk about a stretch.
OpenAI’s generative artificial intelligence video maker has techies in a twist after the tool, named Sora, created a creepy clip of a gymnast contorting her body in a series of astounding — and entirely unnatural — moves.
The unsettling visuals, requested by a Sora user via text prompt, showed the dancer spinning her way erratically through a series of mostly impossible stunts.
Occasionally, the body appeared to be flying away as well — in what appeared to be an exorcism in progress.
Critics were quick to point out that the breakthrough AI has yet to pass the “Turing Test” — a term used to describe how machines display human-like intelligence, or lack thereof.
The fintech worker who made the footage said on X that gen AI gymnastics videos are currently the barometer for how successful the self-made footage can be — due to the wide range of motion capture.
“I’ve known for the last 6 months, having played with text to video models, that they struggle with complex physics movements like gymnastics,” the man, known online as Deedy Das, told Ars Technica.
The X user shared other videos of AI gymnastic stunts where the athlete appeared to split into two people at points.
Still, he noted these current clips are still much more sophisticated than what AI could do half a year ago on the subject matter.
“Overall, it was an improvement because previously… the gymnast would just teleport away or change their outfit mid flip, but overall it still looks downright horrifying. We hoped AI video would learn physics by default, but that hasn’t happened yet!”
Others recognized that generative AI, which also struggles greatly with copying language, still has much to learn about human mechanics.
“Watching Sora struggle with basic physics tells you how simulation of reality requires actually understanding it first,” one user commented.
“We’re discovering that ‘common sense’ is anything but common — it’s one of the hardest things to encode.”
In other recent robotic flubs, Coca-Cola was recently ripped for the quality of a recent AI-made holiday commercial.
Others have also had uncomfortable interactions with large language model chatbots recently.
A Google program went off the rails by telling a user to die and instructed others to eat rocks for nutritional benefit.
