Sora, the AI video creation tool from OpenAI, became available to ChatGPT Plus subscribers in December 2024. Since then, I’ve dabbled with the tool with an eye toward how it can influence my teaching and education in general.
After generating a number of videos and experimenting with different settings, my impression is that while fun to play with, Sora is too expensive for serious use in education and still has some frustrating drawbacks.
Here’s a closer look at how Sora works, what I liked and disliked, and how it could, theoretically at least, be used for teaching.
What Is Sora?
Sora is OpenAI’s video creation tool. As you’d expect, creating videos through Sora is similar to using OpenAI’s ChatGPT. You enter a video prompt describing what you want your scene to look like. For instance, in one prompt I wrote:
“A warrior with a sword walks through a vast valley that looks like the highlands of Scotland. We zoom in on his face as he looks forward with surprise and concern and then grabs his sword and draws it ready for a fight.”
Then you have the option of choosing the desired resolution for the video and what style you want. You can also have it generate multiple versions from the same prompt so you can choose which video you like best.
The video Sora generated for me (see below) was impressive on the one hand, but also a far cry from the videos OpenAI shared in its preview of Sora. The warrior in my video grabbed his sword with his hand, and the default was black and white, which made it look almost cartoonish.
Switching it to color made it worse, as you can see below.
Other users get much better-looking videos with more elaborate prompts and by using a tool that is available on the app called Storyboard. I found, however, that Sora had a steeper learning curve than I anticipated, and getting quality videos required more time than I was willing to devote to the tool.
How Much Does Sora Cost?
ChatGPT Plus is $20 per month and gives users the ability to create short videos on Sora with 1,000 credits. The number of credits each video requires varies depending on length, resolution, and other settings you choose, but I averaged about 50 credits per video, which would limit me to about 20 videos per month.
This price point is obviously a restricting factor for using Sora in most school settings.
Teaching Potential of Sora
From a pure capability standpoint, Sora is breathtaking. It’s still hard for me to grasp how a computer program is also able to create such rich videos so fast.
Theoretically, if Sora cost less and worked a bit better, there would be some good educational uses. I teach writing and think it would be fun to give a creative writing prompt to the class and have students input part of that prompt into Sora to see what it generated; however, given the credit limits, that would be difficult to do with more than a few students.
More realistic uses for an educator would be to pre-generate a video related to various educational lessons and topics. Maybe you would create a video of planets orbiting the sun and discuss what Sora gets right and wrong. Educators could also use videos to illustrate various terms and punch up slideshows.
Downsides of Sora
For a major player in the AI space, OpenAI’s web pages still seem pretty clunky and as if still in Beta testing. This is fine when you’re using free tools but becomes frustrating when you’re paying for access.
I also had previously started and stopped a ChatGPT Plus subscription and it was confusing to restart that subscription. In addition, various OpenAI tool home pages are pretty slow to load. Several times, I entered a prompt for Sora only to get a message to try again later.
Again, because I’m paying for this tool, these minor but frequent errors sent me into full “I’d like to speak to a supervisor" mode. Even when the website was working properly, I was mostly unimpressed with the videos I generated with Sora.
I’m sure better prompts would create better videos, but I’m not personally willing to spend the necessary time learning how to prompt Sora. As a result, even if I worked at a school where budget wasn’t a factor, I’m not sure Sora would be something I’d use frequently.
Bottom Line: Is Sora Useful to Teachers?
In its current form and at its current price point, Sora isn’t a realistic teaching option. Some tech-savvy teachers will have fun playing around with it, I’m sure. I had at first, but then got frustrated with the interface and videos I was generating.
For me and for the vast majority of educators out there, however, this just doesn’t feel ready for education prime time. At the moment, there are many other AI tools I find more interesting and helpful.
Ultimately, the experience of using Sora can and likely will change as the technology improves, so I’m not counting it out for all time, and will keep an eye on it.
