Meta Unveils ‘Movie Gen,’ Tool That Creates 16-Second AI-Generated HD Videos

Meta has just unwrapped a new potential tool for — or threat to — Hollywood.

The internet giant, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, on Friday announced Movie Gen: a new AI tool that can create realistic-looking videos clips (with synchronized AI-generated audio) that are up to 16 seconds in length based on a text prompt. According to Meta, Movie Gen also can generate personalized AI videos using a single photo. Meta said it is still testing Movie Gen and did not provide details on how or when it would be available publicly.

Meta shared clips created using Movie Gen, including a surfing koala, a baby hippo swimming in a river (a nod to internet meme-celebrity Moo Deng), and a “woman DJ” spinning records.

The company didn’t detail what sources of data it used for Movie Gen, saying only, “We’ve trained these models on a combination of licensed and publicly available data sets.” 

Other similar text-to-video systems include OpenAI’s Sora (which is not available publicly yet either). The advent of realistic-looking gen-AI video platforms has alarmed some in the media and entertainment biz, including Tyler Perry — who, citing Sora specifically, said he was suspending a planned $800 million expansion to his Atlanta studios.