Global entertainment company VICE Media has appointed Devak Shah as executive VP of strategy. Shah has been serving as a strategic consultant to VICE Media for a few months, alongside other media and entertainment companies where he advised on capital raises, turnarounds and new business models. Previously he was head of strategy & operations at Hellosaurus, a venture-backed interactive media startup, where he played a key role in scaling the business and supporting its strategic exit to Brilliant in 2022. Shah was a strategy and business development executive in NBCUniversal’s TV & Streaming Group, where he worked closely with senior leadership on streaming strategy, rights acquisitions, M&A, and new business creation. He started his career in independent film finance at FilmNation. VICE Media focuses on producing content across TV, film, sports, digital, news, and branded advertising. It is powered by three core divisions: VICE Studios, an award-winning studio group which develops, finances and produces premium and culture-defining content for the global marketplace (including hit series Gangs of London and the Dark Side franchise); VICE Brand Group, which includes the Clio-winning, full-service advertising agency VIRTUE, and production company London Alley and label Pulse Films; and VICE operates joint ventures with A+E for cable television network VICE TV and with Savage Ventures to manage its VICE branded digital platforms….
OpenAI pulls the plug on Sora, the viral AI video app that sparked deepfake concerns
OpenAI is shutting down its social media app Sora, which went viral last fall as a place to share short-form videos generated by artificial intelligence but also raised alarms in Hollywood and elsewhere.
OpenAI said in a brief social media message Tuesday that it was "saying goodbye to the Sora app" and that it would share more soon about how to preserve what users already created on the app.
"What you made with Sora mattered, and we know this news is disappointing," it said.
The company behind ChatGPT released Sora in September as an attempt to capture the attention, and potentially advertising dollars, that follow short-form videos on TikTok, YouTube or Meta-owned Instagram and Facebook.
But a growing chorus of advocacy groups, academics and experts expressed concern about the dangers of letting people create AI videos on just about anything they can type into a prompt, leading to the proliferation of nonconsensual images and realistic deepfakes in a sea of less harmful "AI slop."
OpenAI was forced to crack down on AI creations of public figures — among them, Michael Jackson, Martin Luther King Jr. and Mister Rogers — doing outlandish things, but only after an outcry from family estates and an actors' union.
Disney, which made a deal with OpenAI last year to bring its characters to Sora, said in a statement Tuesday that it respects "OpenAI's decision to exit the video generation business and to shift its priorities elsewhere."
"We appreciate the constructive collaboration between our teams and what we learned from it, and we will continue to engage with AI platforms to find new ways to meet fans where they are while responsibly embracing new technologies that respect IP and the rights of creators," Disney's... Read More