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public citizen
Watchdog Warns of Increased AI Propaganda, Deepfakes, and Harassment by OpenAI's 'Dangerous' Sora 2
"The hasty release of Sora 2 demonstrates a reckless disregard for product safety, name/image/likeness rights, the stability of our democracy, and fundamental consumer protection against harm."
Nov 12, 2025
Consumer advocacy organization Public Citizen on Wednesday issued a new warning about the dangers of Sora 2, the artificial intelligence video creation tool released by OpenAI earlier this year.
In a letter sent to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Public Citizen accused the firm of releasing Sora 2 without putting in proper guardrails to prevent it from by abused by malevolent actors.
"OpenAI must commit to a measured, ethical, and transparent pre-deployment process that provides guarantees against the profound social risks before any public release," the letter stated. "We urge you to pause this deployment and engage collaboratively with legal experts, civil rights organizations, and democracy advocates to establish real, hard technological and ethical redlines."
Among other things, Public Citizen warned that Sora 2 could be used as "a scalable, frictionless tool for creating and disseminating deepfake propaganda" aimed at impacting election results. The watchdog also said that Sora 2 could be used to create unauthorized deepfakes and revenge-porn videos involving both public and private figures who have not consented to have their likenesses used.
Although OpenAI said it has created protections to prevent this from occurring, Public Citizen said recent research has shown that these are woefully inadequate.
"The safeguards that the model claims have not been effective," Public Citizen explained. "For example, researchers bypassed the anti-impersonation safeguards within 24 hours of launch, and the 'mandatory' safety watermarks can be removed in under four minutes with free online tools."
JB Branch, Big Tech accountability advocate at Public Citizen, said that the rushed release of Sora 2 is part of a pattern of OpenAI shoving products out the door without proper ethical considerations.
"The hasty release of Sora 2 demonstrates a reckless disregard for product safety, name/image/likeness rights, the stability of our democracy, and fundamental consumer protection against harm," he said.
Advocates at Public Citizen aren't the only critics warning about Sora 2's potential misuse.
In a review of Sora 2 for PCMag published last week, journalist Ruben Circelli warned that the tool would "inevitably be weaponized" given its ability to create lifelike videos.
"A world where you can create lifelike videos, with audio, of anything in just a minute or two for free is a world where seeing is not believing," he said. "So, I suggest never taking any video clips you see online too seriously, unless they come from a source you can absolutely trust."
Circelli also said that OpenAI as a whole does not do a thorough job of protecting user data, and also questioned the overall utility of the video creation platform.
"While some of the technology at play here is cool, I can’t help but wonder what the point of it all is," he wrote. "Is the ability to generate AI meme videos really worth building 60 football fields' worth of AI infrastructure every week or uprooting rural families?"
Consumer Affairs also reported on Wednesday that a coalition of Japanese entertainment firms, including Studio Ghibli, Bandai Namco, and Square Enix, is accusing OpenAI of stealing its copyrighted works in order to train Sora 2 to generate animations.
This has spurred the Japanese government into action. Specifically, the government has now "formally requested that OpenAI refrain from actions that 'could constitute copyright infringement' after the tool produced videos resembling popular anime and game characters," according to Consumer Affairs.
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Protesters at 100+ Campuses Tell Trump 'Hands Off Higher Ed!'
"We're not only out to defeat Trump, but to also win a vision for affordability, security, and freedom for our generation—both in higher education, and in our democracy," said one student organizer.
Nov 07, 2025
Students and professors at over 100 universities across the United States on Friday joined protests against President Donald Trump's sweeping assault on higher education, including a federal funding compact that critics call "extortion."
Crafted in part by billionaire financier Marc Rowan, Trump's Compact for Excellence in Higher Education was initially presented to a short list of prestigious schools but later offered to other institutions as a way to restore or gain priority access to federal funding.
The compact requires signatories to commit to "transforming or abolishing institutional units that purposefully punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas," while also targeting trans student-athletes and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies.
"The attacks on higher ed are attacks on truth, freedom, and our future. We're organizing to protect campuses as spaces for learning, not control—for liberation, not censorship," said Brianni Davillier, a student organizer with Public Citizen, which is among the advocacy groups and labor unions supporting the Students Rise Up movement behind Friday's demonstrations.
BREAKING: Students and faculty from across NYC have come together to tell Apollo CEO Marc Rowan that it’s going to be a lot harder than he thinks for billionaire greed to destroy higher education.
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— Sunrise Movement (@sunrisemvmt.bsky.social) November 7, 2025 at 11:43 AM
At the Community College of Philadelphia, protesters stressed that "higher education research saves lives." Duke University demonstrators carried signs that called for protecting academic freedom and transgender students. Roughly 10 miles away, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, they unfurled a banner that read, "Stand for Students | Reject Trump's Compact."
Professors from multiple schools came together for a rally at Central Connecticut State University, according to Connecticut Post.
"The compact would require universities submit to a system of government surveillance and policing meant to abolish departments that the government disapproves of, promote certain viewpoints over others, restrict the ability of university employees to express themselves on any major issue of the day," said James Bhandary-Alexander, a Yale Law School professor and member of the university's American Association of University Professors (AAUP) executive committee.
AAUP, also part of the coalition backing the protest movement, said on social media Friday: "Trump and Marc Rowan's loyalty oath compact is [trash]!! Out with billionaires and authoritarians in higher ed! Our universities belong to the students and higher ed workers!"
Protesters urged their school leaders to not only reject Trump's compact—which some universities have already publicly done—but also focus on other priorities of campus communities.
At the University of Kansas, provost Barbara Bichelmeyer confirmed last month to The University Daily Kansan that KU will not sign the compact. However, students still demonstrated on Friday.
"They did say 'no' but that's like the bare minimum," said Cameron Renne, a leader with the KU chapters of the Sunrise Movement and Young Democratic Socialists of America. "We're hoping to get the administration to hear us and at least try to cooperate with us on some of our demands."
According to The University Daily Kansan, "Renne said the groups are also pushing for divestment from fossil fuels, improvements in campus maintenance, and the removal of restrictions on gender ideology."
Some schools have declined to sign on to the compact but reached separate agreements with the Trump administration. As the Guardian reported Friday:
At Brown University in Rhode Island—one of the first institutions to reach a settlement with the Trump administration earlier this year—passersby were invited to endorse a banner listing a series of demands by dipping their hands in paint and leaving their print, while a group of faculty members nearby lectured about the history of autocracy.
"Trump came to our community thinking we could be bullied out of our freedom," said Simon Aron, a sophomore and co-president of Brown Rise Up. "He was wrong."
Brown isn't the only Ivy League school to strike a deal with Trump; so have Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania, the alma mater of both Rowan and Trump. Cornell University followed suit on Friday amid nationwide demonstrations.
"November 7th is only the start," said Kaden Ouimet, another student organizer with Public Citizen. "We're building a movement of students, faculty, and campus workers to demand our colleges do not comply with the Trump regime, and its authoritarian campus compact."
"We know that to fully take on autocracy, we have to take on the material conditions that gave rise to it," the organizer added. "That is why we're not only out to defeat Trump, but to also win a vision for affordability, security, and freedom for our generation—both in higher education, and in our democracy."
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Warning Against Taxpayer Bailout for Big Tech, Critics Fume Over OpenAI Execs' Talk of Government Loans
"Big Tech is building a mountain of speculative infrastructure," warned one critic. "Now it wants the US government to prop up the bubble before it bursts."
Nov 06, 2025
Tech giant OpenAI generated significant backlash this week after one of its top executives floated potential loan guarantees from the US government to help fund its massive infrastructure buildout.
In a Wednesday interview with The Wall Street Journal, OpenAI chief financial officer Sarah Friar suggested that the federal government could get involved in infrastructure development for artificial intelligence by offering a "guarantee," which she said could "drop the cost of the financing" and increase the amount of debt her firm could take on.
When asked if she was specifically talking about a "federal backstop for chip investment," she replied, "Exactly."
Hours after the interview, Friar walked back her remarks and insisted that "OpenAI is not seeking a government backstop for our infrastructure commitments," while adding that she was "making the point that American strength in technology will come from building real industrial capacity, which requires the private sector and government playing their part."
Despite Friar's walk-back, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said during a podcast interview with economist Tyler Cowen that released on Thursday that he believed the government ultimately could be a backstop to the artificial intelligence industry.
"When something gets sufficiently huge... the federal government is kind of the insurer of last resort, as we've seen in various financial crises," he said. "Given the magnitude of what I expect AI's economic impact to look like, I do think the government ends up as the insurer of last resort."
Friar and Altman's remarks about government backstops for OpenAI loans drew the immediate ire of Robert Weissman, co-president of consumer advocacy organization Public Citizen, who expressed concerns that the tech industry may have already opened up talks about loan guarantees with President Donald Trump's administration.
"Given the Trump regime’s eagerness to shower taxpayer subsidies and benefits on favored corporations, it is entirely possible that OpenAI and the White House are concocting a scheme to siphon taxpayer money into OpenAI’s coffers, perhaps with some tribute paid to Trump and his family." Weissman said. "Perhaps not so coincidentally, OpenAI President Greg Brockman was among the attendees at a dinner for donors to Trump’s White House ballroom, though neither he nor OpenAI have been reported to be actual donors."
JB Branch, Public Citizen’s Big Tech accountability advocate, said even suggesting government backstops for OpenAI showed that the company and its executives were "completely out of touch with reality," and he argued it was no coincidence that Friar floated the possibility of federal loan guarantees at a time when many analysts have been questioning whether the AI industry is an unsustainable financial bubble.
"The truth is simple: the AI bubble is swelling, and OpenAI knows it," he said. "Big Tech is building a mountain of speculative infrastructure without real-world demands or proven productivity-enhancing use cases to justify it. Now it wants the US government to prop up the bubble before it bursts. This is an escape plan for an industry that has overpromised and underdelivered."
An MIT Media Lab report found in September that while AI use has doubled in workplaces since 2023, 95% of organizations that have invested in the technology have seen "no measurable return on their investment."
Concerns about an AI bubble intensified earlier this week when investor Michael Burry, who famously made a fortune by short-selling the US housing market ahead of the 2008 financial crisis, revealed that his firm was making bets against Nvidia and Palantir, two of the biggest players in the AI industry.
This has led to some AI industry players to complain that markets and governments are undervaluing their products.
During her Wednesday WSJ interview, for instance, Friar complained that "I don’t think there’s enough exuberance about AI, when I think about the actual practical implications and what it can do for individual."
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, meanwhile, told the Financial Times that China was going to beat the US in the race to develop high-powered artificial intelligence because the Chinese government offers more energy subsidies to AI and doesn't put as much regulation on AI development.
Huang also complained that "we need more optimism" about the AI industry in the US.
Investment researcher Ross Hendricks, however, dismissed Huang's warning about China winning the AI battle, and he accused the Nvidia CEO of seeking special government favors.
"This is nothing more than Jensen Huang foaming the runway for a federal AI bailout in coordination with OpenAI's latest plea in the WSJ," he commented in a post on X. "These grifters simply can't be happy making billions from one of the greatest investment manias of all time. They'll do everything possible to loot taxpayers to prevent it from popping."
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