Creating with Sora Safely
Source: OpenAI Blog
Distinguishing AI content
Every video generated with Sora includes both visible and invisible provenance signals. All Sora videos embed C2PA metadata—an industry‑standard signature—and we maintain internal reverse‑image and audio search tools that can trace videos back to Sora with high accuracy, building on successful systems from ChatGPT image generation and Sora 1. Many outputs also carry visible, dynamically moving watermarks that include the name of the creator.
Image‑to‑video with real person likeness
As we continue to strengthen Sora’s guardrails, we’re enabling more creative expression and connection, including letting people create videos from photos of family and friends. Users can upload images with people to make videos in Sora after attesting that they have consent from the people featured and rights to upload the media. Image‑to‑video generations with people are subject to particularly strict safety guardrails—stricter than those for Sora Characters (formerly the cameo feature). Images that include kids or young‑looking persons are subject to even tighter moderation and guardrails about what can be created from them. These videos will always have watermarks upon sharing.
Consent‑based likeness using characters
We created characters to give you strong control over your likeness in Sora. Likeness includes your appearance and your voice. Guardrails are intended to ensure that your audio and image likeness captured in characters are used only with your consent. Only you decide who can use your characters, and you can revoke access at any time. We also block depictions of public figures, except when using the characters feature. Videos that include your characters—including drafts created by other users—are always visible to you, allowing you to review, delete, or report any videos featuring your character. Extra safety guardrails apply to any video with a character, and you can enable an even stricter set that restricts types of usage, such as limiting major changes to your appearance, preventing embarrassing situations, and keeping your identity broadly consistent.
Safeguards for teens
Sora includes stronger protections for younger users, including limitations on mature output. The feed is designed to be appropriate for all Sora users, and content that may be harmful, unsafe, or age‑inappropriate is filtered out for teen accounts. Teen profiles are not recommended to adults, and adults cannot initiate messages with teens. Parental controls in ChatGPT let parents manage whether teens can send and receive DMs, as well as select a non‑personalized feed in the Sora app. By default, teens also have limits on how much they can continuously scroll in Sora.
Filtering harmful content
Sora uses layered defenses to keep the feed safe while leaving room for creativity. At creation, guardrails seek to block unsafe content before it’s made—including sexual material, terrorist propaganda, and self‑harm promotion—by checking both prompts and outputs across multiple video frames and audio transcripts. We have red‑teamed to explore novel risks and tightened policies relative to image generation given Sora’s greater realism and the addition of motion and audio. Beyond generation, automated systems scan all feed content against our Global Usage Policies and filter out unsafe or age‑inappropriate material. These systems are continuously updated as we learn about new risks and are complemented by human review focused on the highest‑impact harms.
Audio safeguards
Adding audio to Sora raises the bar for safety. Sora automatically scans transcripts of generated speech for potential policy violations and blocks attempts to generate music that imitates living artists or existing works. Our systems are designed to detect and stop such prompts, and we honor takedown requests from creators who believe a Sora output infringes on their work.
User control and recourse
You choose when and how to share your videos, and you can remove your published content at any time. Videos are only shared to the feed when you choose to do so. Every video, profile, direct message, comment, and character can be reported for abuse, with clear recourse when policies are violated. You can also block accounts at any time, preventing others from seeing your profile or posts, using your character, or contacting you via direct message.