OpenAI is briefly blocking customers of its Sora 2 AI video app from making content material that features Martin Luther King Jr.’s likeness after some folks created what the know-how firm known as “disrespectful depictions” of the civil rights activist. 

OpenAI, the corporate behind generative-AI platform ChatGPT, mentioned late Thursday on social media that it made the choice after Bernice A. King, the youngest baby of King, contacted the corporate on behalf of his property.

On the property’s request, “OpenAI has paused generations depicting Dr. King because it strengthens guardrails for historic figures,” OpenAI and King Property Inc. mentioned in a joint assertion posted on X.

An OpenAI spokesperson declined to remark past what the corporate posted on social media. The King Heart, a nonprofit devoted to preserving the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr., additionally declined further remark.

The tech firm launched Sora 2 in September, an AI video technology app that enables customers to create hyperrealistic and fantastical content material with “cameos” of themselves, mates and others who grant permission. It shortly jumped to the highest of Apple’s app retailer.

Customers can management using their very own likeness on Sora 2. OpenAI, nonetheless, has not specified its coverage on producing movies with photographs of deceased folks. The corporate mentioned Thursday that licensed representatives and property house owners can request {that a} public determine’s likeness not be utilized in Sora 2 movies. 

“Whereas there are sturdy free speech pursuits in depicting historic figures, OpenAI believes public figures and their households ought to in the end have management over how their likeness is used,” OpenAI and King’s property mentioned. 

Sora 2 has additionally stirred controversy after content material creators generated a flood of video clips that included copyrighted characters, equivalent to animated TV character SpongeBob Squarepants and Mario from the Nintendo online game. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman addressed the difficulty in a weblog publish earlier this month, noting that the corporate will give copyrights house owners “extra granular management over technology of characters.”