{"id":2079050,"date":"2025-10-09T09:07:31","date_gmt":"2025-10-09T09:07:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2079050"},"modified":"2025-10-09T09:07:31","modified_gmt":"2025-10-09T09:07:31","slug":"facing-backlash-openai-curbs-use-of-dead-celebrities-likenesses-in-sora","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/facing-backlash-openai-curbs-use-of-dead-celebrities-likenesses-in-sora\/","title":{"rendered":"Facing Backlash, OpenAI Curbs Use of Dead Celebrities’ Likenesses in Sora"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Don’t miss out on our latest stories. <\/i>Add PCMag<\/a> as a preferred source on Google.<\/i><\/p>\n

Don\u2019t expect to see as many dead celebrities in Sora<\/a>. OpenAI tells PCMag it will remove “public figures who are recently deceased” from the AI video app if their families or estates request it.<\/p>\n

This comes amid backlash over Sora\u2019s capacity to generate realistic videos of nearly anyone, including deceased celebrities<\/a>, and place them in a wide range of user-imagined scenarios.<\/p>\n

Most notably, the daughters of actor Robin Williams and civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. condemned<\/a> the flood<\/a> of AI-generated videos featuring their fathers\u2019 likenesses.\u00a0“It\u2019s dumb, it\u2019s a waste of time and energy, and believe me, it\u2019s NOT what he\u2019d want,” Zelda Williams wrote in an Instagram Story.<\/p>\n

Sora has also been full of other celebrities, including rap artist Tupac Shakur, painter Bob Ross, and physicist Stephen Hawking.<\/p>\n

OpenAI initially allowed AI-generated videos featuring deceased celebrities \u2014 a prohibition that already exists for living famous figures. But on Wednesday, the company pivoted and said: \u201cWhile there are strong free speech interests in depicting historical figures, we believe that public figures and their families should ultimately have control over how their likeness is used.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor public figures who are recently deceased, authorized representatives or owners of their estate can request that their likeness not be used in Sora cameos,\u201d the company adds.<\/p>\n

However, Axios reports<\/a> that OpenAI hasn\u2019t clarified what counts as recently deceased. Robin Williams died in 2014; Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, the policy appears to be already in effect for at least a few celebrities. For example, Sora will no longer generate videos featuring music legend Michael Jackson, flagging it as a potential content policy violation. Over the weekend, the company also shifted<\/a> gears on allowing Sora to create AI-generated videos featuring characters from famous franchises.<\/p>\n

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman pledged to “give rightsholders more granular control over generation of characters, similar to the opt-in model for likeness but with additional controls.” As a result, it looks like you can no longer create videos featuring characters such as Nintendo’s Mario or Pikachu. An OpenAI website<\/a> is also accepting copyright Sora and ChatGPT copyright complaints.<\/p>\n

Disclosure: Ziff Davis, PCMag’s parent company, filed a lawsuit against OpenAI in April 2025, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Don’t miss out on our latest stories. Add PCMag as a preferred source on Google. Don\u2019t expect to see as many dead celebrities in Sora. OpenAI tells PCMag it will remove “public figures who are recently deceased” from the AI video app if their families or estates request it. This comes amid backlash over Sora\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2079051,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25173],"tags":[390210,366505,390579,312150,390577,390578,351557,388938],"class_list":["post-2079050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists","tag-dead-celebrities","tag-openai","tag-public-figures","tag-robin-williams","tag-sora","tag-stephen-hawking","tag-tupac-shakur","tag-zelda-williams"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Facing-Backlash-OpenAI-Curbs-Use-of-Dead-Celebrities-Likenesses-in.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2079050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2079050"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2079050\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2079052,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2079050\/revisions\/2079052"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2079051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2079050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2079050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2079050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}