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Ilyasah Shabazz didn\u2019t want to look at the AI-generated videos of her father, Malcolm X. The seemingly realistic clips – made by OpenAI\u2019s new video-maker Sora 2 – show the legendary civil rights activist making crude jokes, wrestling with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and talking about defecating on himself.<\/p>\n
Sora\u2019s speed and uncanny realism has helped rocket the app to the top of the download charts, and videos reanimating the dead have been among its most viral clips. Sora-produced videos of Michael Jackson, Elvis Presley and Amy Winehouse have flooded social media platforms, with many viewers saying they struggle to tell whether the videos are real or fake.<\/p>\n
Subscribe to The Post Most newsletter for the most important and interesting stories from The Washington Post. <\/a><\/p>\n Some clips played for laughs, such a video of \u201cMr. Rogers\u2019 Neighborhood\u201d host Fred Rogers writing a rap song with hip-hop artist Tupac Shakur. Others have leaned into darker themes. One video showed police body-camera footage of Whitney Houston looking intoxicated. In some clips, King makes monkey noises during his \u201cI Have a Dream\u201d speech, basketball player Kobe Bryant flies aboard a helicopter mirroring the crash that killed him and his daughter in 2020, and John F. Kennedy makes a joke about the recent killing of right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk.<\/p>\n OpenAI said the text-to-video tool would depict real people only with their consent. But it exempted \u201chistorical figures\u201d from these limits during its launch last week, allowing anyone to make fake videos resurrecting public figures, including activists, celebrities and political leaders – and leaving some of their relatives horrified.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is deeply disrespectful and hurtful to see my father\u2019s image used in such a cavalier and insensitive manner when he dedicated his life to truth,\u201d Shabazz, whose father was assassinated in front of her in 1965 when she was 2, told The Washington Post. She questioned why the developers were not acting \u201cwith the same morality, conscience, and care \u2026 that they\u2019d want for their own families.\u201d<\/p>\n Sora\u2019s videos have sparked agitation and disgust from many of the depicted celebrities\u2019 loved ones, including actor Robin Williams\u2019s daughter, Zelda Williams, who pleaded in an Instagram post recently for people to \u201cstop sending me AI videos of dad.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cTo watch the legacies of real people be condensed down to \u2026 horrible, TikTok slop puppeteering them is maddening,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n As AI\u2019s rapid development gives everyday people the power to create realistic-feeling images and chatbots, it also challenges age-old notions about who controls a person\u2019s memories, identity and legacy after they die. Most companies can\u2019t use Robin Williams\u2019s likeness for commercial gain without permission from his family. But on Sora, strangers have rendered Williams, who died in 2014, as they choose.<\/p>\n \u201cCommercially, if you create meme-able content of famous people who are recognizable, that\u2019s going to get more clicks,\u201d said Henry Ajder, an AI expert who studies deepfakes and coined the term \u201csynthetic resurrection\u201d to describe creating digital copies of the dead. \u201cWith deceased individuals, this opens up such a huge question about ownership of likeness, and really fundamentally changes the social contract around what it means to be you online.\u201d<\/p>\n As technology advances, Ajder\u2019s vision is becoming a more common reality. The prospect of digitally cloning the dead is already sparking uncomfortable questions about families\u2019 inability to control how their loved ones are portrayed.<\/p>\n \u201cThe amount and the volume of this kind of synthetic resurrection content is just huge now,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd it\u2019s not being done by creative agencies in partnership with the estate \u2026 or by a Hollywood studio as a tribute to a much-loved actor or actress, with consent from their family. It\u2019s being done by s\u2014posters, memesters, racists and all the rest.\u201d<\/p>\n OpenAI said its policy was based on \u201cstrong free speech interests in depicting historical figures.\u201d But after backlash, the company said Wednesday it would begin allowing the representatives of \u201crecently deceased\u201d public figures to request that their likeness be blocked from Sora videos.<\/p>\n \u201cWe believe that public figures and their families should ultimately have control over how their likeness is used,\u201d an OpenAI spokeswoman said. She declined to define \u201crecently deceased.\u201d<\/p>\n OpenAI has described its video tool as a wellspring of creativity – fueled in part by its depictions of real people. One executive, Varun Shetty, told the tech blog Newcomer that company officials had been permissive with video creation to avoid a \u201ccompetitive disadvantage\u201d from laissez-faire rivals. And chief executive Sam Altman said on a podcast that some copyright holders – instead of being furious that their intellectual property was being swiped – had told the company they worried \u201cyou won\u2019t put my character in enough.\u201d<\/p>\n In public statements, however, some of Hollywood\u2019s biggest firms have been far less charitable. The chief of the Motion Picture Association said OpenAI needed to \u201ctake immediate and decisive action\u201d to protect creators\u2019 rights. And the talent firm Creative Artists Agency said Sora 2 had exposed its \u201cclients and their intellectual property to significant risk.\u201d<\/p>\n Online, the tool has sparked considerable criticism. Bernice King, the daughter of Martin Luther King Jr., re-shared Zelda Williams\u2019s comments and asked people to \u201cplease stop.\u201d Hank Green, a popular YouTuber and creator, shared a Sora video of King and said, \u201cThat\u2019s got to be illegal somehow. \u2026 OpenAI launched a lawsuit magnet into the world.\u201d<\/p>\n Joan Kowalski, president of the company that owns painter Bob Ross\u2019s work and likeness, said dealing with unauthorized reproductions of the artist has long been an issue. But Sora brought a new challenge, she said, as videos of the soft-spoken Ross, who died in 1995, grabbed millions of views by depicting the artist having a screaming meltdown in his studio or painting the World Trade Center in flames.<\/p>\n Fans of Ross can no longer tell what\u2019s real and what\u2019s fake, Kowalski said, and some wrote to the company in alarm. Ross\u2019s reputation for kindness and encouragement, he said, seemed to make the artist a magnet for irreverent renderings.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople want to take the most pure, wholesome person and mess it up,\u201d Kowalski said. \u201cThere\u2019s some sort of weird human condition where they want to take the most lovely, innocent thing and bash it.\u201d<\/p>\n Ajder, who has advised companies and governments on synthetic-media policies, said deepfakes have already made waves in recent years as advertisers look to use clones of dead celebrities in promotions. These include a 2021 video in which a body double and face-mapping software was used to make Ross paint a scenic portrait of Mountain Dew with Bob Ross Inc.\u2019s permission.<\/p>\n But the debate has been supercharged by AI, which can create more realistic images quicker and with fewer considerations of style or taste. The law offers little recourse.<\/p>\n Reid Kress Weisbord, a professor at Rutgers Law School who studies wills and estates, said defamation law relates to injuries of reputation for the living, and the claim generally \u201cdies with the person who\u2019s being defamed.\u201d<\/p>\n Families might pursue a legal claim for the person\u2019s postmortem right of publicity, which prevents commercial exploitation of someone\u2019s name or likeness without their consent. Many states now allow for those rights to descend to the dead person\u2019s estate, including in California, where the statute of limitations lasts 70 years after a death.<\/p>\n OpenAI could argue that the videos represent a \u201ctransformative use,\u201d a legal concept for protecting parodies, reviews and other forms of expression that build on the value of another person\u2019s work. And some tech boosters have long argued that AI-generated works should be protected by the First Amendment.<\/p>\n But the legal questions strike at a corner of the law that AI has made more unsettled every year, Weisbord said. Focusing on the financial question might miss the real issue: Who can shape a person\u2019s likeness or memory after they die?<\/p>\n Regarding the emotional impact of a child seeing a likeness of their parent doing things they never did, Weisbord said, \u201cI\u2019m not sure the commercial exploitation angle really captures the nature of that harm.\u201d<\/p>\n For political figures, there\u2019s the added risk of people using their likeness to spread wrong information or stoke outrage. Sora videos of Winston Churchill, for example, showed the late British prime minister promoting the airline JetBlue or referencing crass internet memes.<\/p>\n As a new generation learns about major historical figures, its first encounters should be grounded in reality and not fake AI portrayals, said Adam Howard, executive director of the International Churchill Society.<\/p>\n Churchill\u2019s \u201cname, likeness, and words are not free stock for synthetic manipulation,\u201d added Randolph Churchill, president of the Society and Winston Churchill\u2019s great–<\/strong>grandson. \u201cWinston Churchill belongs to history, and his legacy deserves accuracy, dignity and lawful stewardship.\u201d<\/p>\n By allowing for controversial yet eye-catching content like AI celebrities, OpenAI is borrowing from a playbook perfected by social media companies such as Meta: Do whatever it takes to get users on the app and ask forgiveness later, said Thales Teixeira, a business professor at the University of California at San Diego. \u201cFirst you grow, and then you try to solve the problems,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Family members like Shabazz, meanwhile, are left to deal with the emotional fallout. For days, Shabazz let the fakes sit on her phone unwatched. Only after she returned home from a work trip did she open them, ready to process whatever they contained.<\/p>\n \u201cI have people relying on my support,\u201d she said. \u201cI don\u2019t want to be weighed down by \u2026 someone else\u2019s irresponsible act.\u201d<\/p>\n – – –<\/p>\n Razzan Nakhlawi and Monika Mathur contributed to this report.<\/p>\n Related Content<\/p>\n Melania Trump says she has \u2018open channel\u2019 to Putin on family reunification<\/a><\/p>\n She left the medical mainstream and rose to be RFK Jr.\u2019s surgeon general pick<\/a><\/p>\n