It’s Sam Altman: the man who stole the rights from copyright. If he’s the future, can we go backwards? | Marina Hyde

His AI video generator Sora 2 has been reviled for pinching the work of others. One giant leap for Sam: for everyone else, not so much

Take a look at Sam Altman. I mean, actually do it. Go to Google images, where you can find countless photos of the OpenAI boss smiling in a kind of wan genius way, the humble lost puppy of Silicon Valley. But I urge you to simply cover the bottom half of his face in any of these pictures, and you will immediately clock that Sam has the sad-psycho eyes of the lost woman's boyfriend who the police have asked to front the missing person's appeal. Please come home, Sheila - we're all worried sick and we just want you back.

If that joke seems off-colour, or crass, or some kind of manipulative stretch - please, don't worry. I'm using the OpenAI gold standard of giving-a-toss, where the unwilling subjects of any generated content have to formally, time-consumingly and bureaucratically opt out of being used/abused/exploited any way anyone likes. I haven't heard from Sam, so my assumption is that he's fine with me saying that he knows exactly where Sheila is because he put her there. He is, after all, fast emerging as precisely the type to appear alongside the phrase in plain sight".

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

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