Early testers leak OpenAI's Sora video model, accusing the company of exploitation

A group of early testers leaked OpenAI's Sora video model on Hugging Face, protesting against what they claim is exploitation and "art washing" by the company. The leaked version allowed several users to generate video content similar to OpenAI's official Sora demos, completely free of charge and uncensored.

In an open letter, the group accused OpenAI of misleading them into unpaid roles, describing themselves as "bug testers, PR puppets, training data, and validation tokens." They criticized OpenAI's artist program, alleging it exploits artists for free labor while lending artistic credibility to a corporate AI product. The artists claimed they were promised a creative partnership but were instead used for PR validation, demanding more transparency and support for the arts.

The group also objected to OpenAI's content approval requirements, which mandated pre-approval for all video outputs before public sharing. OpenAI defended the program, stating participation was voluntary and included free access, grants, and events. The company quickly shut down public access to the leaked tool just a couple of hours after the incident, delaying its official release indefinitely.