Revolutionary AI Video Platform OpenArt Lowering Barriers for Creators Amidst Ethical Concerns Over Copyright Infringement
Artificial intelligence-generated videos featuring surreal characters have gained significant attention online, captivating a young demographic with clips showcasing unusual combinations such as a shark wearing sneakers and a ballerina with a cappuccino for a head. One company spearheading this trend is OpenArt, launched in 2022 by two ex-Google employees. The platform boasts approximately 3 million monthly active users.
OpenArt recently introduced a new “One-Click Story” feature in open beta, enabling users to transform a single sentence, script, or song into a one-minute video with a narrative structure. This versatile tool caters to various content needs, from humorous TikTok videos to more serious explainer and music videos for YouTube. OpenArt even envisions this feature being utilized in advertising contexts.
The “One-Click Story” offers three templates: Character Vlog, Music Video, or Explainer. For a character vlog, users begin by uploading an image of their character and entering a prompt. If a song is uploaded, the software interprets the lyrics and generates an animation that mirrors the song’s themes, like depicting flowers blooming in a garden.
Users can modify individual clips by revisiting the editor’s storyboard mode and adjusting prompts for a more polished result. The platform utilizes over 50 AI models, empowering users to select their preferred tools, including DALLE-3, GPT, Imagen, Flux Kontext, and Stable Diffusion.
The primary objective of the new feature is to lower the threshold for AI content creation, a medium that remains popular despite ongoing debates regarding its ethical implications. Although these tools can be advantageous—such as video generators facilitating quick content production with original characters and narratives—several ethical concerns must be addressed, including imitating other artists’ styles, intellectual property rights, and potential misuse leading to misinformation.
During testing, we observed that the Character Vlog option might infringe on intellectual property (IP) due to the types of characters it offers—like Pikachu, SpongeBob, and Super Mario—which could lead to IP infringement risks. In June, Disney and Universal sued AI firm Midjourney over AI-generated images.
Users should be mindful that if their videos are found to violate another’s copyright, the video may be removed from social media platforms, and if proven complicit in the infringement, they could potentially face legal action under copyright law.
“We strive to exercise caution around IP infringement,” Coco Mao, co-founder, and CEO, explained. “When you upload some IP characters, by default, the models we use will reject them, and it’s not able to produce the IP character, but sometimes it slips.”
Mao added that OpenArt is open to collaborating with major IP holders to secure licensing for characters.
OpenArt distinguishes itself through its commitment to maintaining character consistency. Unlike conventional video models that often rely on disjointed clips users assemble into a coherent narrative, OpenArt aims to ensure both visuals and the narrative remain consistent throughout the video.
“A common challenge that AI has struggled to address is maintaining character consistency within the same video…If you don’t have the same character, it becomes challenging to immerse oneself in the story,” Mao noted.
Looking forward, OpenArt plans to develop the one-click feature further by enabling users to create videos featuring dialogues between two different characters. Another planned update is the creation of a mobile app.
OpenArt operates on a credit-based system. It offers four plans, with the most basic costing $14 per month for 4,000 credits, which includes up to four One-Click stories, 40 videos, 4,000 images, and four characters. The advanced plan costs $30 per month for 12,000 credits and includes up to 12 One-Click stories. The Infinite plan is priced at $56 per month for 24,000 credits, and a team plan is available for $35/month per member.
OpenArt has raised $5 million in funding from Basis Set Ventures and DCM Ventures and boasts a positive cash flow. The company aims to achieve an annual revenue rate of over $20 million.
