What Impact Will Sora Have on Video Content Creation?
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OpenAI's text-to-video AI model Sora has been released, sparking a flood of news coverage and commentary. I'm not an AI technology expert, and I believe most people have already learned about Sora's technical details through other channels. I just want to discuss from a content creator's perspective: What impact will Sora have on video content (including short videos, medium-length videos, and industrial film and television content)?
In my social circle, opinions are mixed—some believe Sora will revolutionize the film and television industry, even ushering in an era of 'zero-baseline creation' for video content; others question its practical value, especially its lack of the 'soul' essential for creators. In fact, both perspectives have merit, depending on how one defines 'content creation.' Looking back at history, we see that the development of the internet has been a continuous reshuffling of content creation, with various formats, themes, and industrial standards constantly evolving. 'Change' is the norm, while 'stagnation' is abnormal. The further development of AIGC (including but not limited to Sora) will drive this reshuffling process toward greater diversity. For simplicity, we can use a highly simplified analytical model to divide the capabilities of native internet content creators into two directions. Hotspot sensitivity, which refers to the ability to chase trends and viral topics. Without a doubt, at any given time, the majority of traffic on social media is concentrated on a very few trending topics. The ability to grasp these hot topics determines a creator's short-term explosive impact, or in more fashionable terms, their "breakout potential."
Content tone, which refers to the uniqueness and irreplicability of content. Some creators produce content that is unforgettable, bearing distinct personal imprints that no competitor can imitate. Whether a creator possesses sufficient, irreplaceable tone determines their long-term endurance, or what we might call "sustainability" or "fan loyalty." Truly powerful creators should excel in both capabilities, achieving an all-rounded proficiency that combines 'explosive impact with marathon endurance' - the most efficient path to becoming a top-tier creator. During 2017-18 on Douyin and 2019-20 on Bilibili, we witnessed the emergence of such creators who simultaneously captured trending topics while deeply developing their content style, propelling them overnight into the ranks of 'internet superstars' (specific examples need not be mentioned). While such fortunate individuals are rare, they periodically emerge as the aspirational benchmarks for other content creators.
For creators who lack the ability (or willingness) to chase trends, the optimal development path lies in becoming a high-quality vertical content provider, attracting fans aligned with their style, and achieving 'slow-burn breakout' through word-of-mouth effects. The most typical example of this path is Luo Xiang: through years of teaching judicial examination courses, he gradually accumulated a massive following of organic fans with his accessible and humorous style, ultimately achieving mainstream recognition through fan-driven dissemination. Strictly speaking, Luo Yonghao from years ago also fits this model. Generally speaking, vertical content providers can eventually witness qualitative transformation through quantitative accumulation - provided they persist long enough, which most fail to do. In stark contrast are those creators who merely chase trends without establishing a distinctive style. Their survival strategy relies on being 'fast to act,' capitalizing on every possible way to 'ride the wave' of trends, even resorting to imitation and plagiarism, all in an effort to quickly 'break through.' The lifecycle of such creators is typically short-lived, experiencing a momentary surge before fading into obscurity—essentially engaging in a 'live fast, die young' short-term game. This is particularly evident in the realm of short videos, where professional organizations like MCNs often mass-produce such accounts, hoping that a very few will go viral while the majority become mere 'cannon fodder.'
The Four Quadrants of Online Content Creators Many users lament: "Social media is flooded with fast-food content, with short videos and live streams being the epitome of shallow content, offering no substantial material that allows for a thoughtful experience!" However, this lament is misguided. While it's true that the majority of online content may be devoid of depth and style—just as the majority of a bottle of wine is water, we cannot conclude that 'wine is water.' In fact, it is only in the era of social media that vertical, niche content has gained stable distribution channels, thereby achieving the possibility of being seen by more people. Tens of thousands of mid-tier niche creators only truly embarked on their content creation journeys in the mobile internet era. If forced to choose between the "pre-social media era" and the "social media era," I believe most creators would opt for the latter.
So the question arises: Will the advent of Sora (and the wave of generative AI evolution it has sparked) favor one type of creator over the other? The answer seems clear—AIGC will benefit those niche content creators who rely on distinctive styles and "slow-burn" appeal, while disadvantaging those who chase trends and produce fleeting, viral content. In the AIGC era, the barrier to "chasing trends" will become increasingly low, rendering it no longer a core competitive advantage for content creators. Thus, the importance of "content style" rises further, potentially becoming the sole trump card for success. Don't get me wrong, 'hot topics' will always emerge one after another and require coverage by creators. However, when it comes to speed, human creators can't compete with AI no matter how hard they try. In the field of text news, AI's speed advantage has already become evident: even before ChatGPT was born, a large number of 'breaking news' reports—from finance to sports, from entertainment gossip to social news—were automatically written by 'AI writers' in the first instance. After ChatGPT was widely deployed, almost all breaking news reports could be handled by AI. Those who regularly trade stocks may have a deeper understanding of this—open any stock information software, and you'll see that the proportion of AI-written content, whether it's sudden financial news or instant earnings report interpretations, is steadily increasing. Professional analysts and commentators are withdrawing from these 'speed-based' instant information tasks, focusing instead on deep interpretations that require high-level logical analysis.
The birth of Sora means this trend has officially extended to the video field. Given time, this trend will spread to all genres and types of content: the 'timely coverage' of hot topics will primarily be AI's task, with the competition mainly revolving around AIGC efficiency, making it hard for anyone to stand out with unique approaches. Currently, in China, some e-commerce service providers are offering 'AI-generated video scripts based on trending topics' to live-streaming hosts, allowing them to keep up with trends even if they know nothing about the topic. It's easy to imagine that future competition for hot topics will become highly homogenized. Economic principles tell us that highly homogenized markets always lead to oversupply, resulting in a severe surplus of 'trend-chasing' content. Most content creators whose core competitiveness relies on this will be phased out. For content creators whose core competitiveness lies in 'style', AIGC can become a powerful new weapon. Internet users still have an innate tendency to chase trends, but what they need more in the future is not time-sensitive content, but distinctive interpretations or in-depth analyses. Football enthusiasts can certainly relate to this: in the era of scarce information, the primary demand for football media was fast and comprehensive news coverage; today, in an era of extremely abundant information, news coverage has long been saturated, and the demand has shifted to in-depth analysis of matches and interactive, entertaining programs. High-quality vertical creators can fully achieve division of labor with AI: the former is responsible for the stylistic part, the so-called 'spark of inspiration'; the latter handles the parts that don't require style, the repetitive tasks—or, in the jargon of the content industry, the 'routine work.'
AI is a tool, a technological means created by humans to help solve problems. From the current situation, as long as AI does not develop self-awareness, it will not possess so-called 'originality,' but will merely collect and organize existing human knowledge—even advanced generative AI like ChatGPT is no exception. OpenAI has already disclosed the technical details of Sora, and it can be seen that its technical approach inherits the previously publicized DALL-E text-to-image model. While there is a certain degree of innovation, it is not groundbreaking. Clearly, at least in the current environment, Sora is unlikely to produce true 'originality,' and the efficiency and appeal of the videos it generates still highly depend on the 'training' by individual users. So, like all previous generative AI models, Sora's role in content creation is more akin to a support in MOBA games: helping the carry (C位) better utilize their strengths, allowing them to focus on output without distractions, rather than replacing the carry's role. A strong carry player with a powerful support can become even more formidable, while an unskilled carry player will still struggle even with strong support. Take the example of the 'AI automatically generating video scripts based on trending memes' feature mentioned earlier. Creators with a distinct style can modify these scripts to align with their unique tone, efficiently producing high-quality content. In contrast, creators lacking a defined style might only churn out repetitive, low-quality 'junk.'
From this, we can draw a conclusion—the 'rich get richer' trend in the content industry will persist in the AIGC era, though its implications are more nuanced than simple 'Matthew Effect' dynamics: top-tier content creators will continue to thrive and reap the benefits of the era, while niche creators with strong stylistic identities can also enjoy these advantages. For these two groups, the next two decades will be the best of times. For others, however, it will be the worst. Sora reaffirms this trend. Of course, in today's rapidly evolving AI technology, any change is possible, and any dream or nightmare could become reality. If after some time the views expressed in this article are proven wrong (or partially wrong), that would be completely normal. Being able to live in an era of AIGC awakening, whether as observers or participants, we are fortunate. What matters is making thoughtful analyses about the future within our capabilities - their absolute correctness is less important.