[cg505]

1. They need to charge users for generation.

2. They might get into trouble charging users to generate some other entity's IP, so they may revenue-share with the IP owner.

They're probably still losing money even if they charge for video generation, but recouping some of that cost, even if they revshare, is better than nothing.

[earthnail]

You got the last paragraph wrong. They need to negotiate with rights holders on the revenue split. They’re hoping that the virality aspect will be more important to rights holders than money alone, but they will of course also give money to rights holders.

Or, in other words: here’s Sam Altman saying to Disney “you should actually be grateful if people generate tons of videos with Disney characters because it puts them front and center again.”, but then he acknowledges that OpenAI also benefits from it and therefore should pay Disney something. But this will be his argument when negotiating for a lower revenue share, and if his theory holds, then brands that don’t enter into a revenue share with OpenAI because they don’t like the deal terms may lose out on even more money and attention that they would get via Sora.