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OpenAI dropped sora because it was costing them ridiculous amounts of money and earning them very little. They determined that the market can't support the cost

OpenAI dropped sora because it was costing them ridiculous amounts of money and earning them very little. They determined that the market can't support the cost of generating video. Without a material change in the market (more buyers, vastly cheaper generation), it's unlikely a different company could make that work. More buyers isn't likely to happen, so that leaves vastly cheaper generation - something that would cause nvidia's value to collapse if it happened.

fc417fc802 1mo ago
> the market can't support the cost of generating video. I'd suggest that's only the case given the current quality of output. Media is incredibly expensive to produce. A model capable of sufficiently high quality could charge prices that are absurd by today's standards.
- gbear605 1mo ago
  It’s a very small set of buyers that are in that price range. Total annual domestic box office revenue is like $10 billion, maybe $50 billion for global TV and film. And that’s revenue, not profit, and a lot of costs are going to marketing, not to filming and casting. That’s a lot of money, but it’s not the scale that OpenAI and Anthropic are at. Video generation would only make sense at that scale if it was targeting individual consumers, but then it’d need to cost something that consumers are willing to pay - which practically is probably a few hundred per year at most among US consumers, and much less globally, so again it doesn’t solve for the size of the AI companies. I don’t see a way that video generation becomes a big industry without making generation much much cheaper.
  - fc417fc802 1mo ago
    Aren't these two largely separate questions? Viability versus if a given incumbent has interest in a market of a given size. With the combination of (at minimum) streaming platforms, the box office, and advertisements video and audio generation would be viable at a remarkably high price point (as compared to the current token prices for other sorts of things). And as the price comes down presumably the market would grow larger - by how much I have no idea but there are certainly a great deal of currently underserved niche markets.
    - ethbr1 1mo ago
      I think the idea that people are willing to consume an even more slopful Netflix is dubious. There's has already been a decade of complaints about trash content in excess of available viewing hours. The thing with media consumption is that there exist a finite number of eyeball-hours available, and it's a zero sum game against other non-media consumers.

fc417fc802 1mo ago

> the market can't support the cost of generating video. I'd suggest that's only the case given the current quality of output. Media is incredibly expensive to produce. A model capable of sufficiently high quality could charge prices that are absurd by today's standards.

gbear605 1mo ago
It’s a very small set of buyers that are in that price range. Total annual domestic box office revenue is like $10 billion, maybe $50 billion for global TV and film. And that’s revenue, not profit, and a lot of costs are going to marketing, not to filming and casting. That’s a lot of money, but it’s not the scale that OpenAI and Anthropic are at. Video generation would only make sense at that scale if it was targeting individual consumers, but then it’d need to cost something that consumers are willing to pay - which practically is probably a few hundred per year at most among US consumers, and much less globally, so again it doesn’t solve for the size of the AI companies. I don’t see a way that video generation becomes a big industry without making generation much much cheaper.
- fc417fc802 1mo ago
  Aren't these two largely separate questions? Viability versus if a given incumbent has interest in a market of a given size. With the combination of (at minimum) streaming platforms, the box office, and advertisements video and audio generation would be viable at a remarkably high price point (as compared to the current token prices for other sorts of things). And as the price comes down presumably the market would grow larger - by how much I have no idea but there are certainly a great deal of currently underserved niche markets.
  - ethbr1 1mo ago
    I think the idea that people are willing to consume an even more slopful Netflix is dubious. There's has already been a decade of complaints about trash content in excess of available viewing hours. The thing with media consumption is that there exist a finite number of eyeball-hours available, and it's a zero sum game against other non-media consumers.