Over the weekend, a video appeared on X claiming to contain footage of Sora v2, a new version of OpenAI's still unreleased AI video model.

OpenAI released Sora earlier this year to great acclaim. At the time, the best AI video models produced three to five seconds of footage that resembled real motion, but Sora provided a minute-long, near-photorealistic video.

Ruud van der Linden, CEO of LontVideo, presented a slightly shaky video showing a projected film. At first glance, it looks like footage from a Viking movie, but it is actually output from the next-generation version of Sora.

The video appears to have been generated by creating the image in Midjourney and using it as an initial prompt for Sora v2, and was shown at the C21Media Keynote in London during a keynote presentation by Chad Nelson of OpenAI.

What is not yet known is whether this new model of Sora will be released during the 12 Days of OpenAI event, or whether this is a “future version” for filmmakers and industry professionals only (as v1 currently is).

According to van der Lindon, Sora v2 will include 1-minute video output, text-to-video, image, and video-to-video modes, which “we will see soon.”

Chinese models like Kling and Hailuo MiniMax have already achieved similar levels of output to what we saw in the first version of Sora earlier this year; Runway, Luma Labs Dream Machine, and Pika are also at similar levels; and the Sora v2 will have a video-to-video mode, which “will be very interesting to see soon.

Even open source models like Mochi-1 and Tencent's Hunyuan are not far behind Sora in terms of motion and visual realism. Recent leaks of Sora show that the video has the same problems that the current major models face.

We don't know if what we saw at the time of the leak is what we are likely to get this week, or if it is similar to the footage seen in Sora v2, but it is clear that some form of AI footage will be released by OpenAI in the next 12 days.

My guess is that there will be a $20/month plan like Sora v1 with shorter initial video, lower resolution, and Sora v2 will be announced but not released. And when it is released, it will be ChatGPT Pro at $200/month.