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October 4, 2025Cryptopolitan logoCryptopolitan

OpenAI offers rights holders new controls in Sora

OpenAI is moving quickly to turn Sora, its new AI video app, into a money-making machine after its debut this week on Apple’s App ￰0￱ app lets users type prompts to generate short clips, and it has already filled timelines with animated characters, brand logos, and even political ￰1￱ Executive Sam Altman said on Friday that the company will soon introduce ways for rights holders to control how their characters are used, while also testing revenue-sharing with those who allow their properties inside the ￰2￱ in a video surrounded by Pokémon, Sam added bluntly, “I hope Nintendo doesn’t sue us.” The company acknowledged that users are generating far more clips than ￰3￱ of those videos, though, are for small audiences and include material protected under copyright ￰4￱ reality has lawyers warning that OpenAI could soon face major ￰5￱ app, still invite-only and available only on iOS, shot to the top of Apple’s download charts by Wednesday, just a day after ￰6￱ to CNBC, users have already created videos with characters from SpongeBob SquarePants, Rick and Morty, South Park, and Despicable ￰7￱ showed Ronald McDonald escaping police in a burger car, while others depicted Patrick Star, Pikachu, Starbucks cups, and even The ￰8￱ offers rights holders new controls in Sora On his blog , Sam said two major changes are ￰9￱ first is new tools for rights holders to give “more granular control over generation of characters.” This builds on the opt-in model for likeness already in place but goes ￰10￱ wrote that OpenAI is hearing from rights holders who see value in what he called “interactive fan fiction,” but those same owners also want to decide exactly how their characters can or cannot be ￰11￱ said the company plans to apply one standard to everyone while letting rights holders decide if they want in.

“There may be some edge cases of generations that get through that shouldn’t, and getting our stack to work well will take some iteration,” Sam ￰12￱ also pointed to Japan, noting the “remarkable creative output” from its users and how deep the connection is between fans and Japanese ￰13￱ second change will be ￰14￱ said OpenAI needs to “somehow make money for video generation” as usage has far exceeded ￰15￱ said the company will begin experimenting with revenue sharing for rights holders who allow their characters in user-generated videos. “The exact model will take some trial and error to figure out, but we plan to start very soon,” he ￰16￱ compared the pace of change in Sora to the early days of ChatGPT, promising rapid testing and quick fixes when mistakes are ￰17￱ Shetty, OpenAI’s head of media partnerships, said that the company would work with rights holders who want characters blocked from Sora.

“We’ll work with rights holders to block characters from Sora at their request and respond to takedown requests,” Varun ￰18￱ also added that the demand for fan interaction is strong. “People are eager to engage with their family and friends through their own imaginations, as well as stories, characters, and worlds they love,” said ￰19￱ experts warn OpenAI about lawsuits Legal experts are not ￰20￱ Lemley, a professor at Stanford Law School, said that “a lot of the videos that people are going to generate of these cartoon characters are going to infringe copyright.” He warned that OpenAI is “opening itself up to quite a lot of copyright lawsuits by doing this.” Mark also emphasized that if a company loses control of its copyrighted characters, the fallout could be serious.

“You can imagine why Taylor Swift wouldn’t want, even if pornography is off the table, wouldn’t want videos of her purporting to say things she doesn’t say,” he said. “I think the same is going to be true of cartoon characters.” The copyright pressure is already visible across the ￰21￱ and Universal have filed lawsuits against Midjourney, accusing it of distributing AI-generated characters taken from their ￰22￱ also sent a cease and desist letter to ￰23￱ last week to stop it from using Disney characters without ￰24￱ Sora generating the same type of user content, OpenAI now sits on the frontline of a fresh legal storm. Don’t just read crypto ￰25￱ ￰26￱ to our newsletter.

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