Unsupervised Learning Ep 76: Sora Creators Bill Peebles, Rohan Sahai & Thomas Dimson on Their Unexpected Viral Success
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Nov 3, 2025 
Join Bill Peebles, research lead at OpenAI, Rohan Sahai, product lead, and Thomas Dimson, engineering lead with an Instagram background, as they dive into the viral success of the Sora app. They discuss the innovative cameo feature that lets users embed themselves in AI-generated videos. The team shares insights on building a creator-first social network, tackling content moderation challenges, and their ambitious vision for video models as scientific tools by 2028. Expect surprising user creativity and strategies that prioritize human engagement over mere consumption.
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Unexpected Viral Success With Company Buy-In
- Sora's viral success exceeded internal expectations and relied on cross-team support at OpenAI.
- Small teams can launch compute-intensive products if the broader company prioritizes them.
Cameo Emerged From Internal Play
- The cameo idea emerged organically when engineers shared videos and tagged teammates.
- The team realized the product was full of cameos before they formally named the feature.
Design For Creation, Not Doomscrolling
- Prioritizing creation over passive consumption shapes healthier social dynamics.
- Cameo plus a creativity-oriented recommender steers behavior toward remixing and active participation.