A co-leader of Sora, OpenAI's video generator, has left for Google

One of the co-leaders of OpenAI's video generator, Sora, has left for Google.

Tim Brooks, who led the development of Sora along with William Peebles, made the announcement in a post this evening

“I had a fantastic two years at OpenAI developing Sora,” he said. “Thank you to all the passionate and kind people I worked with. I’m looking forward to the next chapter!”

The news comes as Sora, which has not yet been released, is reportedly suffering from technical setbacks that position it poorly compared to competing systems from Luma, Runway and others. According to The Information, the original system unveiled in February required more than 10 minutes of processing time to create a one-minute video clip. According to the publication, OpenAI is in the process of training an improved Sora that could quickly create clips.

Google has its own video generation model, Veo, which it introduced this spring at its annual I/O developer conference and which will soon be available in YouTube Shorts, YouTube's short-form video format, for creators to generate backgrounds and six-second clips .

Technical hurdles aside, OpenAI appears to be ceding partnership ground to video generation challengers in recent months. Earlier this month, Runway signed a deal with Lionsgate, the studio behind the “John Wick” and “Twilight” franchises, to train a custom video model for Lionsgate's film catalog. About a week later, Stability, which develops its own video generation models, recruited “Avatar,” “Terminator” and “Titanic” director James Cameron to its board.

OpenAI is set to meet with filmmakers and Hollywood studios to demo Sora earlier this year, and the company has teamed up with a number of independent directors (and some brands) to showcase the system's capabilities. However, OpenAI has not yet announced a long-term collaboration with a big name.