Googzilla Takes Another OpenAI Sucker Punch
February 19, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
In January 2023, the savvy Googlers woke up to news that Microsoft and OpenAI had seized the initiative in smart software. One can argue the technical merits, but from a PR and marketing angle, the Softies and Sam AI-Man crept upon the World Economic Forum and clubbed the self-confident Googzilla in the cervical spine. The Google did not see that coming.
The somewhat quirky OpenAI has done it again. This time the blow was delivered with a kin geri or, more colloquially, a groin kick. How did Sam AI-Man execute this painful strike? Easy. The company released Sora, a text to video smart software function. “OpenAI’s Sora Generates Photorealistic Videos” reports:
Sora is a generative AI diffusion model. Sora can generate multiple characters, complex backgrounds and realistic-looking movements in videos up to a minute long. It can create multiple shots within one video, keeping the characters and visual style consistent, allowing Sora to be an effective storytelling tool.
Chatter indicates that OpenAI is not releasing a demonstration or a carefully crafted fakey examples. Nope, unlike a certain large outfit with a very big bundle of cash, the OpenAI experts have skipped the demonstrations and gone directly to a release of the service to individuals who will probe the system for safety and good manners.
Could Googzilla be the company which OpenAI intends to drop to its knees? From my vantage point, heck yes. The outputs from the system are not absolutely Hollywood grade, but the examples are interesting and suggest that the Google, when it gets up off the floor, will have to do more.
Several observations:
- OpenAI is doing a good job with its marketing and PR. Google announces quantum supremacy; OpenAI provides a glimpse of a text to video function which will make game developers, Madison Avenue art history majors, and TikTok pay attention
- Google is once again in react mode. I am not sure pumping up the number of tokens in Bard or Gemini or whatever is going to be enough to scrub the Sora and prevent the spread of this digital infection
- Googzilla may be like the poor 1950s movie monster who was tamed not by a single blow but by many pesky attacks. I think this approach is called “death by a thousand cuts.”
Net net: OpenAI has pulled up a marketing coup for a second time. Googzilla is ageing, and old often means slow. What is OpenAI’s next marketing play? A Bruce Lee “I am faster than you, big guy” or a Ninja stealth move? Both methods seem to have broken through the GOOG’s defenses.
Stephen E Arnold, February 19, 2024
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