I don't understand some parts of this, the writing doesn't seem to flow logically from one thought to another.
> Second, we are going to have to somehow make money for video generation. People are generating much more than we expected per user, and a lot of videos are being generated for very small audiences.
> We are going to try sharing some of this revenue with rightsholders who want their characters generated by users.
> The exact model will take some trial and error to figure out, but we plan to start very soon. Our hope is that the new kind of engagement is even more valuable than the revenue share, but of course we we want both to be valuable.
The first part of this paragraph implies that the video generation service is more expensive than they expected, because users are generating more videos than they expected and sharing them less. The next sentence then references sharing revenue with "rightsholders"? What revenue? The first part makes it sound like there's very little left over after paying for inference.
Secondly, to make a prediction about the future business model - it sounds like large companies (disney, nintendo, etc) will be able to enter revenue sharing agreements with OpenAI where users pay extra to use specific brand characters in their generated videos, and some of that licensing cost will be returned to the "rightsholders". But I bet everyone else - you, me, small youtube celebrities - will be left out in the cold with no controls over their likeness. After all, it's not like they could possibly identify every single living person and tie them to their likeness.
2. They might get into trouble charging users to generate some other entity's IP, so they may revenue-share with the IP owner.
They're probably still losing money even if they charge for video generation, but recouping some of that cost, even if they revshare, is better than nothing.
You got the last paragraph wrong. They need to negotiate with rights holders on the revenue split. They’re hoping that the virality aspect will be more important to rights holders than money alone, but they will of course also give money to rights holders.
Or, in other words: here’s Sam Altman saying to Disney “you should actually be grateful if people generate tons of videos with Disney characters because it puts them front and center again.”, but then he acknowledges that OpenAI also benefits from it and therefore should pay Disney something. But this will be his argument when negotiating for a lower revenue share, and if his theory holds, then brands that don’t enter into a revenue share with OpenAI because they don’t like the deal terms may lose out on even more money and attention that they would get via Sora.
It's confusing to me because charging money is implied - "we are going to have to somehow make money" - but not actually stated, and then it jumps past the revenue structure into sharing money with "rightsholders".
It has left me wondering if, instead of just charging users, they would start charging "rightsholders" for IP protection. I could see a system where e.g. Disney pays OpenAI $1 million up front to train in recognition of Mickey Mouse, and then receives a revenue share back from users who generate videos containing Mickey Mouse.
"Sora Update #4: Through a partnership with Google, Meta and Snap Inc., you will be able to generate tasteful photos of the cute girl you saw on the bus. She will receive a compensation of $0.007 once she signs our universal content creators' agreement."
“Dear rights holders, we abused your content to train our closed model, but rest assured we’ll figure out a way to get you pennies back if you don’t get too mad at us”
Secondly, to make a prediction about the future business model - it sounds like large companies (disney, nintendo, etc) will be able to enter revenue sharing agreements with OpenAI where users pay extra to use specific brand characters in their generated videos, and some of that licensing cost will be returned to the "rightsholders". But I bet everyone else - you, me, small youtube celebrities - will be left out in the cold with no controls over their likeness. After all, it's not like they could possibly identify every single living person and tie them to their likeness.