In case you missed it, in the last two weeks we've been given the "gift" of two new content creation tools:
- Sora by OpenAI
- Vibes by MetaAI
Here's the gist – imagine a TikTok-style short-form vertical video feed, but all of the content is AI-generated from text prompts. OpenAI took things a step further with a feature called Cameo, which gives you the ability to create yourself as a character in these videos (and for others to use your character as well).
Last week, Samir Chaudry (of Colin & Samir) shared a post on LinkedIn about his reaction to Sora, OpenAI's new video app:
Daniel Greenberg
He said:
But i'm trying to think through it, might as well do it here.
6 thoughts after using Sora for 1 day
1. The Sora feed is bizarre, feels very dystopian. 100% Ai generated content feed, a lot of which mimics content you'd see on Reels / TikTok. I view them similar to meme's at the moment - they are most engaging when they comment on current cultural moments, but always make me feel uneasy.
2. The most engaging video I saw was a trailer for a stranger-things-esque show. It was interesting, visually engaging, and the character dynamic was pretty good.
3. The cameo feature (Ability to create yourself) happens very fast. You can set parameters around it in terms of who else can use your likeness and what they can do with it.
4. The relatively obvious evolution of that feature is the ability to allow brands to use it, the same way that you allow brands to whitelist content to boost on Instagram / TikTok. So there will likely be an ability to license your likeness for brands to use in paid ads.
5. It feels like the matrix, or the sims - where you can live out fantasies through prompting yourself into your dreams. Feels like you have a digital version of yourself that is the version that lives inside your head, doing things you can't achieve in real life.
6. It feels like we're reached a point of attention at all costs, and by any means necessary. What has our attention isn't the content in the feed, but the ability to generate the content. Viewing may be less engaging than creating. Would love to hear other thoughts.
I left a comment that got a huge positive reaction (I should probably comment more on LinkedIn). Here's what I said:
It’s probably a long shot, but the upside is big enough that Meta and OpenAI are willing to invest heavily to try and get a first-mover advantage. If it hits, they win big. If it doesn’t, it’s just a sunk cost.
These new apps are more about experimenting in human psychology and desire than it is actually driven by human desire. I think we’re being played with.
Then just a couple days ago, Casey Neistat put out a video echoing exactly what I said above, but in a much more visual, engaging way.
Even MrBeast called these "scary times:"
When AI videos are just as good as normal videos, I wonder what that will do to YouTube and how it will impact the millions of creators currently making content for a living.. scary times.
— MrBeast (@MrBeast) October 5, 2025
So I want to expand on my perspective here.
The case for concern
There have been a lot of valid concerns voiced from an ethical, humanistic, and legal lens. Deepfakes and deceit are a real concern that I have no idea how we ever legislate, since the government is either literally shut down or trying to re-legislate laws passed decades ago.
Let's look at this from a content creator's standpoint: more content is more competition. There is a finite amount of human attention to be absorbed each day in all of these different content feeds – and if there is more supply of content vying for a relatively static amount of demand, competition gets harder than ever.
The fear is that generating engaging content is now limited to your imagination and text. The amount of potential output by any individual has now skyrocketed – and you multiply that across every individual on the planet.
Today, content creators are a minority. But with text-based prompts, anyone can get into the game and compete. Even if 1% of AI slop is as engaging as human-recorded video, a 100x or 1000x increase in AI slop means a HUGE amount of engaging content competing for the same attention.
It's just a numbers game. And I don't think the platforms themselves care whether humans or AI slop wins – they care whether ad revenue goes up or down.
The case for optimism
I don't think these apps were made because we asked for them – I think they're an experiment in the platforms' wars against each other.
TikTok is a global phenomenon. It commands so much attention – attention that Meta, Google, etc. wish they were commanding.
What if AI content is the next most long-shot format?
I think it's a long shot, as I said before – but the potential win is so massive that these companies want to give it a shot. Remember Quibi? It raised nearly $2 billion...and died in less than a year.
This is what giant companies do – they take big bets like this. OpenAI probably saw their tools being used to create content to publish on other platforms and realized, "What if we had our own platform?"
Just because these platforms exist doesn't mean they'll be successful. We don't know that this type of content is what people want – we're still testing the edges.
When I see AI slop on Instagram, I recoil. When I logged into Vibes and it was all AI slop I couldn't last more than a couple of minutes. Maybe I'm in the minority and this will take off...but it's not a given.
Every new abundance creates a new adjacent scarcity. Scarcities represent opportunity for value creation and value capture. As content generation gets easy – maybe even as attention capture gets easier for some – what becomes hard?
Connection. Emotion. Meaning. Trust.
My plan is to continue to hone my skills and double down on my interests.
And right now, generated video isn't one of them.
