Simon Willison’s Weblog

Having watched this morning's Sora 2 introduction video, the most notable feature (aside from audio generation - original Sora was silent, Google's Veo 3 supported audio in May 2025) looks to be what OpenAI are calling "cameos" - the ability to easily capture a video version of yourself or your friends and then use them as characters in generated videos.

My guess is that they are leaning into this based on the incredible success of ChatGPT image generation in March - possibly the most successful product launch of all time, signing up 100 million new users in just the first week after release.

The driving factor for that success? People love being able to create personalized images of themselves, their friends and their family members.

Google saw a similar effect with their Nano Banana image generation model. Gemini VP Josh Woodward tweeted on 24th September:

🍌 @GeminiApp just passed 5 billion images in less than a month.

Sora 2 cameos looks to me like an attempt to capture that same viral magic but for short-form videos, not images.

Update: I got an invite. Here's "simonw performing opera on stage at the royal albert hall in a very fine purple suit with crows flapping around his head dramatically standing in front of a night orchestrion" (it was meant to be a mighty orchestrion but I had a typo.)