On Oct. 9, 2025, the newest generative artificial intelligence (AI) application, Sora AI 2, was released by OpenAI. This application creates short-form text-to-video content that can help visualize ideas that are storyboarded instead of needing to act and rehearse every example.
While this technology could revolutionize the entertainment industry, it poses a severe risk to people whose livelihoods depend on creating video content.
Generative AI uses systems of information that allow it to generate a response based on a compilation of information the application gathers. This completely bypasses the process of research and critical thinking, thus making it a cost-effective way to create without needing workers.
Although it may be more efficient to use generative AI, like SoraAI, inventions like these can cost thousands of people their jobs. If we want to prevent SoraAI and other applications of generative AI from displacing workers, we need to restrict their capabilities.
According to Professor of Communication Studies David Snowball, we need to look to the past to prevent our worries about the future.
“What we do is we look backward to try to figure out what kind of technology is it sort of closest to, and what did we do there?” Snowball said. “If we do not develop cultural and technological rules for AI’s deployment, it will have tremendously negative consequences. That is true of every technology we have deployed since the invention of writing.”
Like many inventions of the past, generative AI has potential benefits if we learn to use it correctly. For example, Snowball said that many film studios often use SoraAI for storyboarding because it reduces the time and effort to determine whether certain scenes would make sense in practical usage.
However, there are some unaddressed issues with generative AI.
The ability to create visuals of anything raises the potential for legal misuse if generative applications fall into the wrong hands. Currently, OpenAI clarifies that there are filters in place to prevent misuse in cases of extreme violence, sexual content, hateful imagery, celebrity likenesses or infringement of intellectual property.
However, for other sites that generate AI imagery and video, there is no guarantee that such exploitation will be prevented.
Without guaranteed safeguards for generative AI, such as SoraAI, it is difficult to fully justify integrating generative AI into day-to-day life with such a heavy burden. While the prospect of cost-effective production could revolutionize the industry for the better, the program is still brand new and nowhere near recreating the talent and imagination that go into producing high-quality video content.
This does not necessarily mean we need to sideline generative AI. At this point, it would be impossible to get everyone to ignore it because its convenience is too valuable to disregard. We need to find a balance and, especially for students, we need to learn how to make that balance in our lives. It is up to all of us to decide where the future takes us.
If you love using AI, master it. If you fear what AI could mean for the future, take the initiative to shape your relationship with it.