What happened

A Washington Post investigation uncovered compelling evidence that OpenAI trained Sora on copyrighted content without permission, including Netflix shows, TikTok videos, and major studio films.

The investigation found that Sora closely replicates scenes from popular media including Netflix's "Wednesday," video games like "Minecraft," and animated logos from Warner Bros., DreamWorks, and other entertainment studios. 

According to MIT research scientist Joanna Materzynska, who studies AI datasets, "The model reflects the training data. There's no magic involved".

Why it happened

OpenAI maintains it used a combination of "publicly available and licensed data" to develop Sora - a lack of transparency that has fueled criticism, especially from content creators and industry stakeholders, about the apparent unauthorised use of copyrighted works. 

OpenAI cites "competitive reasons" for this lack of transparency and evasion of accountability.