How NGU’s creative students feel about Sora AI
Jake Meyer, Contributing Writer
Feature photo courtesy of Unsplash
Within a few weeks of its launch, AI-generated videos created by text-to-video model Sora have taken over social media. Across Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, countless clips created entirely solely by a computer and a simple prompt have been uploaded, prompting moral and ethical concerns among people.
OpenAI, a company that aims to produce powerful AI software for everyday usage, launched Sora 2 on Sep 29, 2025. The app, which is primarily focused on generating hyper realistic videos from text, hit a million downloads after only a week of being available. This software allows everybody with access to it the ability to create short videos from just a text prompt, meaning anyone could create any video they want. With little to no human input in the final product, many people have derided the practice, seeing no point in something that lacks genuine effort.
Evan Bradford is one of those people. An NGU student majoring in digital media, he works hard to make many fun videos and short films. On Instagram, he often encounters videos created by Sora 2, and while a few of them can be humorous, most of them look lazy to him. Knowing what it’s like to put great effort into creating something, he finds it odd seeing artistic products being generated from simple prompts with no human input at all.
“I get that not everyone is creative,” said Bradford. “But at least actually make the video so you can teach yourself creativity.”
Meriana Gallant, a graphic design major at NGU, agrees with the idea that AI-generated content is extremely lazy. Having also seen numerous AI-generated videos on Instagram, Gallant feels that it destroys human creativity. To her, Sora 2 reduces human willingness to create art by offering a faster, lazier alternative. She sometimes feels her hard work as an artist is being put down the drain by the presence of technology that does similar work at faster rates.
It seems that Bradford and Gallant’s concerns regarding Sora’s role in the creative world are being realized. A few days after Sora 2’s launch, OpenAI announced that they are working on an animated movie called “Critterz” to premiere in 2026. This movie is meant to show film executives that artificial intelligence can be used to make content cheaply and efficiently, two selling points that have nothing to do with the hard work and dedication that the creative people of NGU pride themselves on.
Another problem with the launch has been the taboo and often offensive content produced by the product. Some videos created by the app have been described as racist or violent, such as content depicting fabricated shootings and war footage.
With the ability to place anyone and anything in such an environment, one must wonder how this will be utilized. Many videos have shown various celebrities and political figures, some of whom are long dead, engaging in bizarre activities. Videos of Michael Jackson having a fistfight with Adolf Hitler or Martin Luther King Jr. calling for Sean Combs to be released from jail have circulated through social media, leading people to ask how ethical this technology is.
Bradford has seen many videos of late actor Robin Williams giving nonexistent interviews, a sight he finds utterly surreal. Zelda Williams, the daughter of Robin, has spoken out against Sora 2, calling it “a waste of time” that doesn’t come close to art in any way.
People like Robin Williams cannot consent to their likeness being put in videos like these, which raises a larger question about how this technology will be used in the future, especially with depictions of real people.
One of Gallant’s chief concerns with the technology is its potential to be used for defamation in political and societal aspects.
“I’m mostly concerned with the political side of it, and how politicians can use AI to create fake content of the other political side,” said Gallant.
Since everyone can easily use generative AI to create whatever they want, it’s entirely possible for anyone to ruin someone else’s reputation with a fabricated video. And this possibility extends from the average person to people of prominent power, creating a sense of mistrust in the modern digital age.
Though Sora 2 has a watermark on all videos produced by their app, many people have found ways to edit it out, expanding its potential for deception and misuse. The impact this will have on politics, crime and other deeply social fields remains to be seen, but Gallant believes that unless legal regulation works to stop this, it’s going to be harmful. Sora 2 serves as an important step in the history of hyper-realistic AI-generated videos, but the backlash it has received from NGU students makes its role in creative fields questionable. Despite this backlash, videos made by the model have been all over student’s feeds, making people wonder if it is here to stay.
