Sora AI: Unpopular opinion? (Patreon)

For those who did not visit social media today, a new AI video generator tool with the name Sora AI just surfaced and made front page all over the news globally. Everyone is panicking again and motion/vfx industry took one more blow. But is it really this way?

I know AI is no joke. And yes, one day life it self might be redundant: getting a pill instead of dinner? Having sex wearing VR headsets? Machines taking over the world? We all seen the same movies. And I honestly believe the world is taking a wrong turn on many ends. We pollute the environment, Trump is about to get elected again, Europe is at the brink of 3rd world war for the 3rd year and AI is here to take our jobs.

But should we give up and stop working? Stop learning? Stop evolving?
I started learning 3D on 2002 I think, where rendering was not even a thing. For reflections we were using a specific grey jpeg of a lake to imitate chrome haha. Computers, even the most expensive ones, did not allow anyone to learn anything. We were reading books about Photoshop. By 2006 I had completely abandon 3D altogether thinking im useless and only at the age of 33 (2013) took it seriously again. I felt too old, too irrelevant. But because I loved it, even without a clear purpose, I kept going.
Fast forward a decade later, I feel accomplished and full. What happened in between? Many many things that could easily put me off track. Was there AI at this point? No. But every era has different challenges, same as different opportunities.
Do not give up. I said this before: learning design/animation/vfx/pipelines/leading teams/drawing/being an artist, takes years to master. AI takes 1 day to be in the loop. Even if you feel one day that AI is essential for everything and our work is redundant, you can catch up in a heartbeat as every person out there that suddenly thinks he/she conquered the world cause they can type basic sentences into an algorithm.

There are many things I can discuss about Sora per se, but think of this: if AI gets for good in our lives, losing motion design industry would be the least of our worries. By then we would be living in a world where fake news would ve taken over, internet wont be a replacement of tv anymore, everything from ownership to authenticity would be down the drain, every job will be lost and probably societies would be to the brink of depression.

Thinking about implications of AI in motion design industry is shortsighted and selfish as the stakes are way higher than this.
Till AI becomes this existential threat, I urge you to continue doing what you love, cause this is the only way to move forward in anything. Sora is an impressive, yet unusable tool; it's lazy, it's flawed and has no place in pipelines. And do not forget the copyright lawsuits that are already pending against this heartless technology. We are not alone :)
As 3d scanning did not replace modellers, real time engines did not replace lookdev artists, motion capture did not replace animators, Embergen did not replace Houdini pyro (lol) AI will not replace human input, intention, personal experiences and individualism.

Ignore the hype, continue the hard work and everything will fall into place.

Cheers,
T.

ps. this image suddenly felt relevant to me. Let me know how you interpret it :)