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OpenAI says the latest version of its text-to-video artificial intelligence (AI) tool Sora was downloaded over a million times in less than five days – hitting the milestone faster than ChatGPT did at launch.

The app, which has topped the Apple App Store charts in the US, generates ten second long realistic-looking videos from simple text prompts.

The figures were announced in an X post from Sora boss Bill Peebles, who said the “surging growth” came even though the app was only available to people in North America who had received an invite.

But its handling of copyright material – and the images of dead public figures – has attracted significant criticism online despite the growth.

The Sora app – which makes it easy for users to post videos they have created to social media – has resulted in a deluge of videos on social feeds.

Some have included depictions of deceased celebrities such as musicians Michael Jackson and Tupac Shakur.

Three days ago, Zelda Williams, the daughter of Robin Williams, asked people to stop sending her AI-generated videos of her father, the celebrated US actor and comic who died in 2014.

A plea that press reports have linked to the popularity of Sora.

An OpenAI spokesperson told US news site Axios in an email there were “strong free speech interests” in allowing the depiction of historical figures.

But the spokesperson said, for public figures who were “recently deceased”, authorized persons could request their likenesses aren’t used – though it did not specify what counted as “recent”.

Videos also frequently feature depictions of characters from films, TV and games.

In one Sora deepfake of Sam Altman, the OpenAI boss is shown with several Pokémon characters saying “I hope Nintendo doesn’t sue us”, CNBC reported.

In another viral deepfake video he grills and eats the game’s infamous Pikachu mascot.

Nintendo has not revealed any plans to take legal action, but several companies behind popular generative AI systems, including OpenAI, are currently locked in legal battles with the creators and rights holders of creative works.

The potential cost of these battles is high.

AI firm Anthropic agreed to pay $1.5bn (£1.11bn) to settle a class action lawsuit filed by authors who said the company stole their work to train its AI models.

OpenAI says it is adapting its approach to these issues.

On 4 October, Mr Altman blogged that the firm had been “learning quickly from how people are using Sora and taking feedback from users, rights holders, and other interested groups”.

He said the firm would “give rights holders more granular control over generation of characters”.

And he said there were plans for some form of revenue-sharing in the future.

But it remains to be seen if rights holders will agree Sora videos are a new kind of “interactive fan fiction” as Mr Altman suggested – or whether it will force the firm to face a grilling in the civil courts.

As companies mature, their growth tends to slow. Research has shown that stagnation is a normal part of the corporate life cycle—but it is not destiny. Some firms defy the trend, achieving and sustaining what we call breakout growth: they increase their sales at least twice as fast as their peers for five years, and then sustain above-industry growth for five subsequent years. In a global study of 848 companies that experienced stagnation—defined as five years of below-industry revenue growth—we identified 99 companies that beat the odds over the subsequent 10 years.