Chinese Internet Celebrities Profiteering by Selling Sora-related Tutorials

Credit: Visual China

BEIJING, February 21 (TMTPOST) – After OpenAI released a demo of its new text-to-video generation tool Sora last Thursday, some Chinese are profiteering by teaching netizens how to use the tool which is unavailable to the public.

The previously sluggish A-share market experienced a boost due to this, with the stock prices of several AI companies rising.

The potential impacts of Sora have been discussed by various entities, including tech giants, AI entrepreneurs, technical experts, e-commerce professionals, A-share securities firms, and listed companies.

Many marveled at Sora's powerful video generation capabilities, even though it hasn't been made publicly available yet. Netizens said that if everyone could use Sora to generate videos in the future, the barriers in fields like filming, drawing, and video production would cease to exist.

Some academic figures, such as Turing Award winner and Meta's chief scientist Yann LeCun, raise doubts about Sora's capabilities though.

Concerns about the gap in AI between China and the U.S. were voiced by many AI professionals in China, such as Zhou Hongyi, the co-founder, chairman and CEO of the Internet security company Qihoo 360.

According to Bloomberg, OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman is seeking approval from the U.S. government for a massive venture to enhance the global production of artificial intelligence chips.

Although OpenAI has not yet availed the tool to the public, there have already been numerous paid tutorials related to Sora on Chinese platforms like TikTok, WeChat, and Zhihu. The tutorials cover topics such as how to make money with Sora, with prices ranging from 50 yuan to 999 yuan.

Last Sunday, a blogger named "Zhijianren" released a course centered around Sora, priced at 99 yuan. The course claimed to cover diverse techniques for utilizing Sora, with the aim of broadening people’s horizons.

However, since Sora is still in the testing phase and not yet publicly accessible, the blogger was selling the course without even having used Sora. On the evening of last Sunday, the blogger apologized on the Internet for providing wrong information, but didn’t mention whether to stop the course or to refunds the prepayments from buyers.

Similar occurrences are not unusual on the Chinese internet.

Recently, another internet celebrity Li Yizhou has also gained popularity in the Chinese AI-related tutoring sector. A self-proclaimed Tsinghua PhD, Li launched an AI course priced at 199 yuan, which has garnered millions of followers on TikTok.

According to Feigua data, Li's AI course has sold approximately 250,000 sets within a year, generating a revenue of around 50 million yuan.

A netizen commented on one of Li's videos, saying, "You are the only Chinese genius in the AI sector who can sit on an equal footing with Altman."

Li responded, "I will continue to work hard."

However, recent online evidence suggests that one of Li's AI course groups may have been disbanded by one of his teaching assistants.

In a screenshot of a WeChat group chat interface, the teaching assistant said sarcastically in the group, "If you feel you have stronger capabilities than Li, you can leave the group…If you don't want to listen to the course, I can disband the group, it's okay."

Some students expressed their desire for the group to be disbanded, and they wanted the money back.

According to another screenshot, the above-mentioned WeChat group was disbanded afterwards.

As of the time of writing, Li is still live-streaming his course.

Jiemian News says that while Sora has caused a sense of crisis for those in the film and advertising industry, it has brought profits to a series of AI courses.

Many believe that numerous AI-related tutorials are merely making money by fooling the buyers.

On the Chinese internet, the prices of AI-related courses range from 9.9 yuan to 1,999 yuan. Some netizens claimed to have seen five different Sora course advertisements in a single day.

Some individuals outside the film industry have even formed nine Sora groups within two days, claiming that they will create the world's first AI movie.

However, OpenAI has only released technical articles and demo videos about Sora on its official website, and the product logic is still unknown.

Such money-making craze has even prompted OpenAI to respond.

On the evening of last Saturday, Logan Kilpatrick, head of developer relations at OpenAI, said on X (formerly Twitter), "We have not rolled out access to Sora. If you see posts talking about this or offering access, they are either satire or a scam. Stay tuned!”

Similar scenarios seem to have occurred about a year and a half ago, when ChatGPT emerged. At that time, many people earned money by sharing the latest news, renting accounts, and providing community services related to ChatGPT, capitalizing on information gaps. It can be foreseen that after Sora is open to the public, there will be more and more paid courses and services.

Li Di, CEO of Xiaoice and a former Microsoft executive, has expressed concern that the disorder in the large model industry may lead the AI sector into a negative state of "bad money driving out good money."

Presently, numerous AI-related courses on the Chinese internet lack professionalism, and netizens should be cautious if they want to learn and understand AI products through such courses.

(Note: 1 yuan equals $0.14.)

(This article was first published on the TMTPost App. Author | Lin Zhijia)