The tool known as Media Manager was intended to "identify text, images, audio, and video that are copyrighted," as stated by OpenAI at the time. This was meant to divert the most vocal critics of the company and potentially shield OpenAI from legal issues related to intellectual property.
However, sources familiar with the matter revealed that within the company, this tool was seldom regarded as a significant launch.
“I don’t think it was a priority,” said a former OpenAI employee. “To be honest, I don’t recall anyone working on it.”
A person who is not an employee of the company but coordinates work with it mentioned that they had discussed this tool with OpenAI in the past, but there have been no updates recently.
Moreover, a member of OpenAI's legal team who worked on Media Manager, Fred von Lohmann, transitioned to a part-time consulting role in October.
OpenAI has yet to provide updated information regarding the progress of Media Manager, and the company has not met its own deadline to launch the tool "by 2025."
Artificial intelligence, like OpenAI, analyzes patterns in data to make predictions. ChatGPT can write essays and letters, while Sora creates realistic videos. Models trained on web data sometimes produce nearly exact replicas of these materials, which can infringe on authors' rights. For instance, Sora generates clips featuring the TikTok logo, and ChatGPT has quoted articles from The New York Times, causing outrage among the authors.