Mark Cuban and his affordable drug company are having a viral moment — and the billionaire entrepreneur said he is having a “blast.”
On Thursday, the former “Shark Tank” judge and billionaire investor gave open permission for those on Sora to “have at it” if they would like to make AI videos featuring his likeness.
Within a day, as one of the first major public figures to openly welcome being part of OpenAI’s product experiment, Cuban’s face is taking over Sora and X.
However, there’s a catch.
If you use Cuban’s likeness in an AI video, you are also making an ad for his company, Cost Plus Drugs.
“It’s been a blast,” Cuban told Business Insider of his Sora experience. “I was just curious what people would come up with, and I wanted to experiment with the plug for costplusdrugs.com. So far it’s worked out great.”
Sora 2 is an OpenAI social media platform, featuring AI-generated audio and video. At the moment, it’s invite-based and only available in the US and Canada. In it, you can give permission to your friends or to other users to use your Cameo, or your likeness, to make videos.
In one video, Cuban appeared in a bright yellow cardigan with an apple on it, sitting in what looks like a kindergarten classroom, to rapidly deliver lines like “Cost Plus Drugs is clear and fair, shows the number right then and there” to the rhythm of cheerful music. Others depict Cuban on a vacation in Madrid, making dance moves to the styles of different eras, and performing onstage as a pop star. The line “Brought to you by Cost Plus Drugs” always appears toward the end of these clips.
He has been actively reposting his own Sora deepfakes on X. Each of these videos is now racking up tens of thousands of views on X alone.
“Sora has done a great job keeping the creepy stuff out,” Cuban said. “Which makes it all the better.”
Sam Altman, the OpenAI CEO, and Bill Peebles, head of Sora, both took notice of Cuban’s advertising move and talked about it on Friday’s “TBPN” podcast.
Co-host Jordi Hays said that while Cuban used to be a vocal opponent of AI in advertising, he is now “leveraging the feature to the max.”
“I think there’s gonna be all these weird new dynamics that we see emerge that weren’t possible in previous kinds of video,” Altman told Hay’s after the comment on Cuban. “This is like a fun period, because it’s all going to be so different every few days.”
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