OpenAI’s new Sora video is an FPV drone ride through the strangest TED Talk you’ve ever seen – and I need to lie down

OpenAI's new Sora text-to-video generation tool won't be publicly available until later this year, but in the meantime it's serving up some tantalizing glimpses of what it can do – including a mind-bending new video (below) showing what TED Talks might look like in 40 years.

To create the FPV drone-style video, TED Talks worked with OpenAI and the filmmaker Paul Trillo, who's been using Sora since February. The result is an impressive, if slightly bewildering, fly-through of futuristic conference talks, weird laboratories and underwater tunnels.

The video again shows both the incredible potential of OpenAI Sora and its limitations. The FPV drone-style effect has become a popular one for hard-hitting social media videos, but it traditionally requires advanced drone piloting skills and expensive kit that goes way beyond the new DJI Avata 2.

Sora's new video shows that these kind of effects could be opened up to new creators, potentially at a vastly lower cost – although that comes with the caveat that we don't yet know how much OpenAI's new tool itself will cost and who it'll be available to.

See more

But the video (above) also shows that Sora is still quite far short of being a reliable tool for full-blown movies. The people in the shots are on-screen for only a couple of seconds and there's plenty of uncanny valley nightmare fuel in the background.

The result is an experience that's exhilarating, while also leaving you feeling strangely off-kilter – like touching down again after a sky dive. Still, I'm definitely keen to see more samples as we hurtle towards Sora's public launch later in 2024.

How was the video made?

A video created by OpenAI Sora for TED Talks

(Image credit: OpenAI / TED Talks)

OpenAI and TED Talks didn't go into detail about how this specific video was made, but its creator Paul Trillo recently talked more broadly about his experiences of being one of Sora's alpha tester.

Trillo told Business Insider about the kinds of prompts he uses, including “a cocktail of words that I use to make sure that it feels less like a video game and something more filmic”. Apparently these include prompts like “35 millimeter”, “anamorphic lens”, and “depth of field lens vignette”, which are needed or else Sora will “kind of default to this very digital-looking output”.

Right now, every prompt has to go through OpenAI so it can be run through its strict safeguards around issues like copyright. One of Trillo's most interesting observations is that Sora is currently “like a slot machine where you ask for something, and it jumbles ideas together, and it doesn't have a real physics engine to it”.

This means that it's still a long way way off from being truly consistent with people and object states, something that OpenAI admitted in an earlier blog post. OpenAI said that Sora “currently exhibits numerous limitations as a simulator”, including the fact that “it does not accurately model the physics of many basic interactions, like glass shattering”.

These incoherencies will likely limit Sora to being a short-form video tool for some time, but it's still one I can't wait to try out.

You might also like

TechRadar – All the latest technology news

Read More

Anyone can now browse through Apple Vision Pro apps on the web

You no longer need an Apple Vision Pro to look at Vision Pro apps, because the visionOS App Store is now available for browsing on the web – just like the equivalent App Stores for iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and tvOS.

Head to the Vision Pro App Store in your browser (as spotted by 9to5Mac), and you're able to browse through categories including business, entertainment, and education. You can also find iPhone and iPad apps and games that'll run on the Vision Pro.

You can read our Apple Vision Pro review to get an idea of how much we love the mixed reality headset – and it's now even more appealing, because you don't have to don the device to check out new apps you might be interested in.

What's more, it gives people who don't own one of the headsets a chance to see the apps that are available for it. When you're spending $ 3,499 (about £2,750 / AU$ 5,330) and up on a piece of hardware, maybe you want to see what you'll be able to do on it before buying.

A wider roll out

Apple Vision Pro App Store

See anything you like? The Apple Vision Pro App Store (Image credit: Future)

The experience of browsing through the visionOS App Store is very similar to what you may already be familiar with when you browse for apps for other devices – and some app listings have simply had an extra Apple Vision tab added to them.

You can check out screenshots, see descriptions of the apps and reviews that have been left by other users, and get information about the data collected by each app. Details of app prices and in-app purchase prices are also shown.

It's possible that the launch of the Vision Pro App Store on the web is something to do with the headset's rumored international launch. At the moment, you can only buy the device in the US, but that could be changing in the near future.

There's also been talk that a cheaper version of the Vision Pro could be in the pipeline – though it might not break cover until 2026. It may not be selling in massive numbers yet, but there's no doubting Apple's commitment to the Vision Pro.

You might also like

TechRadar – All the latest technology news

Read More

Google Chrome will soon get a nifty feature to cut through clutter on the web

The Chrome browser and Chromebooks are getting a smart new feature in the form of a Reading Mode, Google has revealed over at BETT.

The education tech show is currently underway in London, and Google unveiled plans for this Reading Mode to come to ChromeOS (meaning Chromebooks) as well as the Chrome browser.

The idea of the Reading Mode is it pops up a separate panel to the side of the web page in the browser window, enabling the viewing of that page in a cleaner format and offering greater clarity for simply reading the content.

In short, it strips away the clutter on the web page, so you can wave goodbye to distracting pictures, videos, icons, and buttons to concentrate purely on reading the actual text.

As 9 to 5 Google, which spotted this, points out, Reading Mode is inbound at some point later this year for the Chrome browser, and will debut on Chromebooks with ChromeOS version 114.


Analysis: Closer to the Edge

This is a welcome option for both ChromeOS and more widely the Chrome browser, as making web content more accessible has got to be a good thing – even if the Reading Mode took a long time to arrive (which it most certainly did).

Cutting out clutter to help focus on the core written content of a web page will be helpful in a range of scenarios, and clearly one of those is in the classroom for those who live with learning differences such as dyslexia and ADHD (which as Google points out, is one in five children in the US).

The Reading Mode will come with plenty of customization options so users can fine-tune it to their own needs, too. That’ll include the ability to change the font, and make the size larger if necessary, as well as adjusting elements such as character and line spacing, or the background color. For example, if you want a dark background rather than white, there’s a menu option to make that happen.

If this functionality sounds familiar, that’s because Google is playing catchup in this case, and you may have already played with this kind of streamlined browsing experience in Microsoft Edge (or other browsers).

The Edge browser has an Immersive Reader feature sporting a lot of similar capabilities to those announced by Google here (and more besides), and it was introduced some three years ago.

Immersive Reader can be kicked into gear by clicking the appropriate icon at the far right of the URL bar. (Although it may not be supported with every web page, you can still pull content out of a page by selecting the text and using the right-click context menu to invoke Immersive Reader).

The big difference between Google and Microsoft’s respective takes here is that Edge transforms the web page into its reading-friendly mode, whereas Chrome pops up the Reading Mode version in a panel next to the web page which is still displayed (side-by-side). Quite why Google has adopted this approach, we’re not sure, but as noted, you can expand the Reading Mode panel to be wider.

TechRadar – All the latest technology news

Read More

Are Apple Services down? Users unable to access iCloud, send files through AirDrop

We're getting reports that Apple's online services such as the App Store, iCloud and others are seeing outages across the globe.

Reports of issues with Apple began to surface around 16.55 GMT, with hundreds of users signaled problems on the outage tracker site DownDetector.

The company has yet to confirm that there are problems for now, but it's best to keep track of Apple Status for now.

We're following the story live, so stay tuned and read all our latest updates below…

App Store, iCloud, and Music all look to be down for now, with our writer Rhys Wood reporting that AirDrop isn't working either for him.

TechRadar – All the latest technology news

Read More

Are Apple Services down? Users unable to access iCloud, send files through AirDrop

We're getting reports that Apple's online services such as the App Store, iCloud and others are seeing outages across the globe.

Reports of issues with Apple began to surface around 16.55 GMT, with hundreds of users signaled problems on the outage tracker site DownDetector.

The company has yet to confirm that there are problems for now, but it's best to keep track of Apple Status for now.

We're following the story live, so stay tuned and read all our latest updates below…

App Store, iCloud, and Music all look to be down for now, with our writer Rhys Wood reporting that AirDrop isn't working either for him.

TechRadar – All the latest technology news

Read More

This Microsoft Teams update will help you cut through all the nonsense

Finding the right chats in Microsoft Teams will soon be a lot easier thanks to a new update that looks to help users focus better.

The video conferencing tool is adding new filters within the Chat app on Teams that will remove meeting chats and chats with bots, giving users a much more streamlined look at their conversations.

According to the official Microsoft 365 roadmap entry, the filter will work across group chats as well as one on one conversations, helping users stay focused on the messages that matter.

Microsoft Teams chat filters

The feature is still in development, but the roadmap has noted a launch date of March 2022, meaning it should arrive in the next few weeks, adding it will be available to all Microsoft Teams users across web and Mac devices.

Microsoft has been working hard to make Teams an integral part of workers' everyday lives, adding a wealth of new features and updates to the platform to encourage hybrid working

This includes the ability to pin messages in Microsoft Teams, much like in Slack or Telegram, allowing users to attach a specific message to the top of the channel so that it’s always visible to other participants, regardless of the number of messages that came afterwards.

The most recent Microsoft financial reports found that Teams now boasts over 270 million monthly active users (MAUs), up from the 250 million MAUs that the company reported just six months ago.

And recent data collected by software firm StarLeaf found almost all (97%) businesses say that video conferencing tools such as Zoom, Webex and Microsoft Teams are now essential to their operations. More than half (57%) of businesses surveyed said their company would not be able to operate for more than an hour without access to their communications tools, while 27% admitted they would struggle to function for even 30 minutes.

TechRadar – All the latest technology news

Read More